Every year, Autodesk?s involvement starts long before the championship, making software available to students for robot design, engineering and animation, demonstrating the company?s commitment to helping the students of today become the engineers of tomorrow.

Autodesk, Inc. today congratulated the winners of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition which took place April 27-29 in Atlanta Georgia. Autodesk sponsors two design contests as part of the FIRST competition ? The Autodesk Inventor Award and The Autodesk Visualization Award. Robert ?Buzz? Kross, vice president of Autodesk?s Manufacturing Solutions Division, presented the awards and prizes to six winning teams at this year?s event.

The Autodesk Inventor Award is presented to the team that best understands, documents and communicates the distinct phases of the design process, from concept to production, using Inventor software.  Inventor is the world?s best-selling 3D mechanical design software. Grand Prize Winner: Team Cybersonics from Palisades High School, Kintnersville, PA took home the grand prize in the Inventor award category by using Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD to create their winning Robot.

Before Kilby, electronic circuits were made by interconnecting a handful of discrete devices - including transistors, diodes, resistors and capacitors,” Watson said. “Kilby’s idea for integrating all of these components within a single chip of silicon to form a functional electronic circuit has forever redefined the meaning of the words ‘device’ and ’system.’ The development of the microprocessor - a system on a chip - led to a quantum leap in the application of computer technology to our way of life.”

The annual OK BEST competition is part of a national robotics competition for high school students. Teams from 32 Oklahoma high schools will build a working robot from components supplied by the OK Best program, then compete in a head-to-head, tournament-style competition on Oct. 19 at Oklahoma Christian.

Nobel Prize-winning inventor and engineer Jack Kilby, who invented the integrated circuit in 1958, will speak at 10 a.m. Saturday at Oklahoma Christian University’s Garvey Center for the Fine Arts.

He will address hundreds of high school students and their instructors at the kickoff event for the fifth-annual OK Best robotics competition.

WRO is aimed at young scientists from around the world to showcase their creative ability and engage in a friendly robot competition to develop their analytical skills. As the international robot festivity among youngsters, the first WRO was inaugurated in 2004 at Singapore and the second WRO was held in Bangkok, Thailand last year. So far, Australia, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Russian Federation, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and UAE have confirmed their participation in this year’s event.

Dean Kamen’s FIRST Robotics Competition for students and their mentors is back for 2005. The new game, field, rules and regulations were revealed at the Robotics Competition Kickoff, Saturday, January 8th, where teams in attendance also recieved their kit of parts.

FIRST expects to involve over 25,000 students this year in more than 1000 teams from “almost every state in the U.S., as wall as from Brazil, Canada, Great Britain, Mexico, Ecaudor and Israel.”

H. E. Dr. Hanif Hassan Ali, UAE Minister of Education, while praising EDUTECH’s initiative in organizing this competition said, ‘Pedagogical approaches that enhance students’ active involvement in the learning of science and technology is the number one priority of all educational institutions in the UAE. EDUTECH’s initiative to organize this competition in the UAE will not only promote technology learning but also help develop crucial skills in students, such as independence, responsibility, critical reasoning, and social interaction. We appreciate EDUTECH’s initiative and urge all the schools in the country to join in this exciting event, which will help them enhance their competitiveness on a global level.’

The UAE National Robotics Olympiad in the high school category will be restricted to children aged between 16 and 18. The competition will follow a ‘City Environment’ theme. Apart from giving presentation about their work, students will be required to construct robots that will trace a marked track line on the playing field, cross intersections, arrive at specified positions and grab a trash can and return while constantly following traffic instructions represented by color patches.

Based on the contestants’ innovative, creative and technological ability, a panel of Judges will select the top UAE team, who will then be sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to China to compete for the international robotics championship at the ‘World Robot Olympiad’ (WRO), a world-wide robot-design competition to be held in the Chinese city of Nanning from November 16-18, 2006.

The UAE is the only country in the GCC that has been invited to participate in WRO, a testament to the country’s increasing recognition as a knowledge hub and technical expertise centre of excellence. The UAE team’s trip will be sponsored by EDUTECH along with LEGO Education, a leading manufacturer and supplier of robotic solutions.

The Black Angels Just what is a secret machine, and why is it so hush-hush? It could be anything, really. (Our guess is it’s the equipment that keeps all of Sen. Ted Stevens’ Internets moving through that series of tubes he’s always talking about.) But in the case of the Dallas-born, New York-bred three-piece the Secret Machines, the only real secret is why the band’s unique take on jangly indie pop hasn’t already reached critical mass (or why the band isn’t on the main stage at Bleeding Kansas, for that matter). Chances are, the first question won’t be a question much longer, what with the Machines’ most recent release, Ten Silver Drops, practically drowning in praise from both listeners and reviewers alike. — Aaron Ladage

Rage, revolution and the barely visible specter of redemption lurk in the shadows of the Black Angels’ psychedelic throwback drone-rock. Farming the same fertile ground plowed by Black Mountaintops, Brian Jonestown Massacre and the like, this Austin, Texas, outfit’s most obvious touchstones are Spacemen 3 (the more blues-driven side) and the Velvet Underground (the noisy side).

More than just a me-too contestant in the psychedelic bake-off, however, the Black Angels seek to draw insightful musical and lyrical parallels between the ’60s and the double-oughts, between the post-Kennedy era and the post-Clinton era. The floor tom pounds tribally, an organ mumbles a plaintive and unbroken tone, the bass thuds and stumbles, the guitar surges and swirls, and the singer cryptically mourns and decries a seemingly endless war.

with the final notes of the sets having been played, the outdoor component of the block party wrapped up. As production crews began disassembling the stage, the party moved indoors to several of Boston’s leading venues, all located on the one-block stretch of Lansdowne Street, directly behind Fenway park.
Aberdeen City started things off around 10PM inside the Axis, a CBGB-esqe club that’s easily dwarfed by the maximum capacity of the Avalon, which is next door, and host of the bigger names of the night.

The Group initially came off as a “Creep”-era Radiohead knockoff with a live show that was good for killing time before the bill’s bigger acts went on. However, things picked up, and they proved to the crowd, and their critics, that they are more than a group of Radiohead-wannabes. The spontaneous live antics of the group showed they had much more to offer than bland 90’s radio re-runs.

With dynamic energy that found a lead guitarist pitching water bottles to the drummer, that were then hit into the crowd, it is fair to presume that Aberdeen City is a band whose live experience will change night to night, venue by venue. They’re an act whose notoriety still leaves something to be desired, but what they will grow to be in time has yet to be decided.