GSA Technology Council

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. successfully conducted a full mission-length firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle’s first stage at its McGregor Test Facility in Texas, on November 22. For the static test firing, the first stage remains firmly secured to the massive vertical test stand, where it fired for 178 seconds or nearly three minutes – simulating the climb of the giant rocket from the surface of the Earth towards orbit.

At full power, the rocket generated 855,000 pounds of force at sea level.  In vacuum, the thrust increases to approximately one million pounds or four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft.  The test consumed over half a million pounds of propellant. All nine engines fired for 160 seconds, then two engines were shut down to limit the acceleration and the remaining seven engines continued firing for 18 more seconds, as would occur in a typical climb to orbit.

The test firing validated the design of SpaceX’s use of nine engines on the first stage, as well as the ability to shut down engines without affecting the functioning of the remaining engines.  This demonstrates the ability of Falcon 9 to lose engines in flight and still complete its mission successfully, much as a commercial airliner is designed to be safe in the event of an engine loss.  Like an airliner, the Falcon 9 engines are enclosed in a protective sheath that ensures a fire or destructive loss of an engine doesn’t affect
the rest of the vehicle.

The Falcon 9 will be the first vehicle since the Saturn V and Saturn 1 to have the ability to lose any engine/motor and still be able to complete its mission without loss of crew or spacecraft.  Engine out
reliability proved crucial to mission success on two of the Saturn V flights.

“In the past month, we performed significant upgrades to the test stand and flame trench in preparation for this test,” said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. “We added the flight base heat shields around the engines to protect the bottom of the rocket from the prolonged blast of heat and vibration.”

“The full mission-length test firing clears the highest hurdle for the Falcon 9 first stage before launch,” said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. “In the next few months, we will have the first Falcon 9 flight vehicle on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, preparing for lift-off in 2009.”

via SpaceX

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the call for entries for the ninth annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA). The premiere competition honors the best student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, developers and computer artists from accredited higher education institutions worldwide. Now in partnership with the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda), the awards ceremony will be held during the Icograda World Design Congress in Beijing, China in October 2009. The Congress will bring together 2,500 delegates from around the globe at the China National Convention Center, located in the heart of the Beijing Olympic Green.

“Adobe is always inspired by the tremendous creativity that we see in Adobe Design Achievement Awards submissions,” said Ann Lewnes, senior vice president of corporate marketing at Adobe. “Our partnership with Icograda will help us showcase breakthrough talent on a global stage, and preview the bright future of interactive design.”

“Communication designers play a critical role in developing messages that influence social and commercial perceptions,” said Professor Don Ryun Chang, president of Icograda. “We are excited to partner with Adobe for the prestigious Adobe Design Achievement Awards ceremony, which recognizes design innovation and encourages unrelenting progress in the field of graphic design and visual communication.”

As demand increases for talented designers and developers in the interactive design and development fields, the Adobe Design Achievement Awards spotlight the talented work of students in three media categories: Interactive Media, Motion Media, and Traditional Media.

– Interactive Media categories include Browser-Based Design, Non-Browser Based Design, Application Development, Installation Design and Mobile Design.

– Motion Media categories include Animation, Live Action and Motion Graphics.

– Traditional Media categories include Illustration, Packaging, Photography, and Print Communications.

Open to students in 40 countries, the contest also draws attention to interactive design and development programs at some of the best accredited higher education institutions. Students are invited to submit projects through the Adobe Design Achievement Awards website. From the website, visitors will also be able to access ADAA Live!, an interactive website that lets visitors see participants submitting projects in real-time.

“I was honored to be a finalist in the Adobe Design Achievement Awards animation category in 2007,” said Johnny Kelley, who recently completed a two-year MA in Animation at The Royal College of Art. “My achievement in this awards competition will continue to benefit me professionally as I look forward to a long career creating compelling animations with Adobe solutions.”

The 2009 Adobe Design Achievement Awards entries will be reviewed and scored by an independent panel of distinguished judges. Judges include: Leimei Julia Chui (Japan), director of global communications for the International Design Center NAGOYA (IdcN); Louis Gagnon (Canada), co-founder of Paprika Communications; Cristina Chiappini (Italy), founder of her own Rome-based consultancy; Garth Walker (South Africa), founder of Orange Juice Design, a creative firm serving many of South Africa’s best known corporate and consumer brands; Tarek Atrissi (The Netherlands), a principal of his own design studio and teacher in the department of Art, Media and Technology at the Utrecht School of the Arts in Holland; Kyle Kim (Korea), a professor at the School of Design, Hongik University and cofounder of design firm UM & Partners; and Lance Wyman (US) principal of his own New York environmental graphic design office.

Submissions will be accepted online through June 5, 2009. The online submissions will be judged digitally in June. For the final phase of judging, semifinalists will be asked to submit their source files and a physical aspect of their entry as it is meant to be viewed. Finalists will be invited to Beijing, China and the Icograda World Design Congress and awarded software and cash prizes.

via: Adobe

Customer Effective Inc. recently hosted its first annual user conference in Greenville, S.C., attracting more than 100 attendees representing more than 45 companies. Attendees included representatives from companies in financial services, professional services, public sector, manufacturing, technology, as well as key executives from Microsoft, ExactTarget and Scribe.

According to Sean Poccia, Director of Information Services at Comag Marketing Group, “The two-day user group meeting was engaging, informative and most notably, collaborative. The variety of users present was a testament to the versatility of Microsoft Dynamics and showed how companies are leveraging the platform to solve complex business problems.”

Attendees heard presentations by Customer Effective executives and consulting directors, industry thought leaders, and peers on current trends and issues including business intelligence, data management, workflow automation and SharePoint integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The conference offered a wide variety of breakout sessions on Sales Force Automation best practices, marketing automation and development /customization strategies to ensure the success of CRM.

“Attending Customer Effective’s user group was an excellent decision,” said Aaron Roth, MarCom Specialist for Cherry, Bekaert & Holland, L.L.P. “The sessions on business intelligence and overall CRM strategy as it relates to “performance management” were exceptionally valuable for my firm. There were many other attendees like me with marketing and IT backgrounds, and I received great feedback on what works and what doesn’t work when implementing a new software solution. Everyone was there to learn more on how to use the software, but what I think was equally valuable was to see how other companies were using Customer Effective to improve problem areas in their organization and to reach specific goals. I look forward to next year’s conference.”

Keynote speaker Lisa Parker from Microsoft addressed Microsoft’s roadmap for Dynamics CRM. Chuck Niswonger, Director of Information Technology for Jamestown Properties, a CRM user and client of Customer Effective’s, offered advice on how to successfully implement and manage a CRM system, showcasing his organization’s CRM best practices.

“Customer Effective’s inaugural User Conference provided a platform for like-minded individuals to share ideas on how to leverage Microsoft Dynamics CRM to drive success,” said Scott Millwood, CEO of Customer Effective. “As leading CRM consultants, we have a great deal of expertise and knowledge of CRM that enables our clients and prospects to engage in successful CRM implementations, and through the User Conference, we can better share that expertise. Our clients and business partners play an integral role in making CRM successful culturally, and at this conference we shared experiences and lessons learned that benefited us all.”

via: Customer Effective

Total Nutraceutical Solutions, Inc. announced that the company has acquired from The Penn State Research Foundation (PSRF) an option to license an invention entitled “Rapid Generation of Vitamin D2 from Mushrooms and Fungi Using Pulsed UV-light. A U.S. Provisional Patent Application was filed on April 23, 2008 and names Professor Robert B. Beelman and Graduate Student Michael Kalaras as co-inventors, Department of Food Science, Pennsylvania State University (PSU).

The PSU scientists recently studied the effect of Pulsed UV light treatment on increasing Vitamin D2 levels in four commonly consumed U.S. mushroom varieties. Pulsed UV light is a technology that delivers energy from light at a high peak power in a short amount of time. A Steripulse®- XL 3000 (Xenon Corporation, Wilmington MA) was used for Pulsed UV light exposure. This study demonstrated that after a very short exposure time of about 1 sec (system generates 3 pulses per second) the Vitamin D2 content of these mushroom varieties increased from very little to upwards of 800% DV/serving. Previous studies using continuous UV light has been shown to take several minutes of exposure to obtain similar values.

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that has many physiologic roles including maintaining blood levels of phosphorus and calcium, promotion of bone mineralization and calcium absorption, maintaining a healthy immune system, and regulating cell differentiation and growth. Recent studies have also shown a link between vitamin D deficiency and diseases such as cancer, chronic heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease and even mental illness.

“This breakthrough Vitamin D technology is a perfect fit for our company whose focus is the use of natural mushrooms and their contained bioactive components as a whole food approach to the prevention of disease,” stated Marvin S. Hausman MD, CEO, Total Nutraceutical Solutions, Inc. “The company’s dietary supplements containing increased amounts of Vitamin D2 can potentially be used to increase needed amounts of this vitamin in the pediatric population as well as nutritionally support the elderly in the prevention of osteoporosis and hopefully decrease the incidence of tragic bone fractures.” Dr. Hausman further stated: “The commercial opportunity for our company in the creation of natural organic vitamin D enhanced specialty mushroom products is underscored by the recent call to action by nutritional scientists from several U.S. universities that the daily intake of vitamin D should be raised to 2,000 International Units (IU).” Currently, the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine recommend the following as adequate daily intake for adults; 200 IU for people 19-50 years old; 400 IU for people 51-70 years old; and 600 IU for people 71 years and older.

“This strategic scientific relationship with Total Nutraceutical Solutions will facilitate further research on the use of pulsed UV light in mushroom products and support clinical studies into the application of these nutritional products in the prevention of disease,” stated Professor Robert B. Beelman, Department of Food Science, Pennsylvania State University.

CSC (NYSE: CSC) announced today that its World Sourcing Services location in Blythewood, S.C., is sponsoring the state’s first federally recognized apprenticeship program in the information technology field. In conjunction with Apprenticeship Carolina(TM), a division of the South Carolina Technical College System, CSC will begin its apprenticeship program by training UNIX administrators and is planning to expand the program into other occupations in partnership with Midlands Technical College.

In response to the emerging shortage of skilled UNIX engineers, CSC’s apprenticeship training program helps equip employee participants with the technical skills needed to meet industry standards and assist them in reaching their career aspirations while also allowing the company to potentially benefit from new hires becoming proficient as quickly as possible.

“We are pleased to partner with the state of South Carolina in a training program that will enable CSC to meet its need for skilled workers,” said Gary Adams, managing director of CSC’s South Carolina Onshore Delivery Center. “We plan to grow by approximately 300 jobs over the next 12 months in the Blythewood area. As a leader in the IT sector, we recognize the need to build talent and are firmly committed to evaluating more training programs in association with the state.”

An apprenticeship is a time-tested method of employee career development that combines supervised on-the-job learning and job-related education. A program registered with the U.S. Department of Labor shows an employer’s visible commitment to developing a high-quality workforce that meets nationally recognized training standards. Registered apprenticeship programs also enable employees to receive incremental wage increases as they demonstrate new competencies throughout the training program. CSC’s apprentice program, based on the company’s UNIX Academy Program, will train and mentor participants on the job for approximately two-and-a-half years and provide 440 hours of additional education.

“CSC’s registration of their program for UNIX administrators clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of apprenticeship as a career development tool in a wide range of occupations,” said Ann Marie Stieritz, Director of Apprenticeship Carolina. “As our state expands its position within the knowledge economy, Apprenticeship Carolina and all of our technical colleges look forward to working with more South Carolina companies in the information technology sector.”

CSC’s World Sourcing Services operations in Blythewood are part of the company’s integrated network of more than 50 global delivery centers, including locations in Canada, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, India, Lithuania, Malaysia, Spain and Vietnam. These operations provide complete coverage of all CSC clients’ current requirements and have been designed to support future client business needs. The Blythewood center is the cornerstone of CSC’s onshore delivery network for North American Public Sector, Aerospace & Defense and commercial clients adhering to government-regulated ITAR security requirements.

About Apprenticeship Carolina(TM)

Apprenticeship Carolina(TM) is a new division of the South Carolina Technical College System that works to ensure all employers in South Carolina have access to the information and technical assistance they need to create demand-driven registered apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeship consultants are available to guide companies through the registered apprenticeship development process from initial information to full recognition in the National Registered Apprenticeship System. These services are available to South Carolina employers free of charge. Interested employers are encouraged to contact Apprenticeship Carolina(TM) at (803) 896-5287 or to visit http://www.apprenticeshipcarolina.com.

About CSC

CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled solutions and services through three primary lines of business. These include Business Solutions & Services, Global Outsourcing Services and the North American Public Sector. CSC’s advanced capabilities include systems design and integration, information technology and business process outsourcing, applications software development, Web and application hosting, mission support and management consulting. Headquartered in Falls Church, Va., CSC has approximately 91,000 employees and reported revenue of $17.3 billion for the 12 months ended Oct. 3, 2008. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at http://www.csc.com.

via: CSC

Collexis Holdings, Inc. announced today that the Asklepios Group, which operates hospitals and specialized rehabilitation clinics in Europe and the United States, has incorporated the voice and video communication functionalities of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, providing information about the availability of experts and direct voice and video communication possibilities.

“Utilizing SharePoint and new technologies from the unified communications stack, we’ve worked with Collexis to connect Asklepios caregivers to existing expertise and knowledge within their network — meaning that patients reap the benefits of faster access to the best of what the healthcare institutions have to offer,” said Tim Smokoff, General Manager, Worldwide Health, Microsoft. “Increased communication between physician and patient as well as between healthcare providers is an important factor in enhancing the satisfaction of patients and staff while still helping improve treatment quality at affordable prices.”

Collexis’ proprietary “Fingerprinting” technology analyzed scientific and medical texts to develop Expert Profiles of Asklepios’ physicians and researchers. The result is a detailed “Knowledge Map” of the Group’s shared expertise. Working with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Asklepios providers can instantly search a central knowledge and skills management system in order to better diagnose and treat patients. Within seconds, providers can then draw on the experience of a colleague in another Asklepios clinic for advice on a disease, diagnosis or therapy.

The Collexis expert profiling solution in combination with the unified communication functionalities from Microsoft redefine the concept of medical cooperation, but also provides concrete benefits for patients, in the form of shorter waiting times and routes on the way to diagnosis and improved treatment success.

“Using these new technologies from Collexis and Microsoft, Asklepios is breaking new ground with this innovative form of medical knowledge management, and we also aim to underline our market-leading role as Europe’s largest private clinic operator,” explains Dr. Tobias Kaltenbach, Chief Executive Officer of Asklepios Kliniken.

With more than 32,000 employees in more than 100 facilities in Europe and the United States, Asklepios needed a way to make professional information, past experience with patients, disease patterns and treatment methods quickly available to doctors across the organization. The project was undertaken within the framework of the Asklepios Future Hospital, a program which aims to set new standards of quality and efficiency in the Healthcare service and to implement consistency throughout all processes. Microsoft Corp. and SyynX

Solutions, a Collexis subsidiary, belong to the more than 20 companies that work with Asklepios in this program.

“We are pleased to see Asklepios, Collexis’ initial healthcare customer, expand its engagement with the addition of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Together with the Collexis Expert Profiling system, internal knowledge that is invariably bound up with individuals will be made available to the entire community in the most advanced manner that will benefit the patients and the physicians,” explains Christian Herzog, General Manager of Life Sciences for Collexis Holdings, Inc.

The Asklepios Group of Hamburg, Germany — a Collexis HealthCare customer since 2005 — began its engagement with the implementation of the Expert Profiling system to develop and maintain a central knowledge and skills management system to enhance collaboration among its clinics and providers. The solution was implemented by Collexis’ German subsidiary SyynX Solutions.

In addition to Asklepios, Collexis is bringing its innovative technology to other healthcare providers, research organizations and universities world-wide, including the National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic Libraries; Johns Hopkins University; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the University of California, San Francisco; the University of South Carolina; Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the World Health Organization.

via: Collexis

Numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics show that South Carolina ranks among the top five states for employment in several important engineering occupations. In three categories, South Carolina has the second-highest employment concentration of engineers in the nation. Those include: chemical engineers, health and safety engineers and industrial engineers. South Carolina ranks fourth in the nation for employment concentration of nuclear engineers.

Press Release appears below:

Engineering 112008

Reed Bolton Byrum, Chair of Greenville’s The Byrum Innovation Group, has been elected to the Board of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce. The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce is the state’s largest statewidebroad-based business and industry trade association, representing more than 6,500 member companies and more than 600,000 member employees.

Press Release appears below:

Byrum Named to SC Chamber Board

The 2008 Innovision Awards dinner was held at the Palmetto Expo Center last night and the following awards were presented:

2008 Hall of Fame Award for Innovation in Education

Furman University Classics Department

Dr. Christopher Blackwell, a professor in Furman University’s Classics department, helped make three ancient manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad available digitally for students and scholars to study online. These manuscripts, bound books with pages made of sheepskin, date from A.D. 950, are so highly restricted that fewer than 20 scholars have been able to study them over the past 150 years. We’ve digitized the three manuscripts, and developed an online application where users can view online the original pages on which specific references appear.

Technology Application Award

Innegrity, LLC and Sealed Air Corporation

Innegrity, LLC, is a four-year-old Upstate company whose main product is a high-modulus, thermoplastic fiber, Innegra S, originally designed to replace fiberglass in composites, ropes and ballistics. Recently, however, the fiber exceeded expectations when tested in ballistics applications such as body armor, particularly when combined with existing high-strength fibers such as Kevlar. Because the production cost of Innegra S is a fraction of that of Kevlar and similar materials, replacing armor made solely from those materials with a hybrid that includes Innegra S would allow the same protection to individuals at a lower cost in both military and civilian applications. Because purchasing hard and soft armor has historically been so expensive, there are still a large number of military vehicles, for example, that go unarmored.

Sealed Air Corporation is a global manufacturer of fresh food and protective packaging with a technology and innovation organization located in Duncan, South Carolina. After several years of research in the area of radio frequency identification, that organization developed an application of a custom-designed radio-frequency identification tag as a means to monitoring temperature in the shipping containers in which foods and other sensitive materials were transported.

2008 Technology Development Award

Zipit Wireless, Inc

ZipIt Wireless introduced the Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 (Z2) in late 2007. Developed in June of 2007, Zipit Wireless’ Z2 marked the company’s second breakthrough product launch with a variety of new features and technical enhancements. The company’s profile within the electronics industry has risen dramatically following the much-heralded launch of the Z2 and the company’s highly successful viral marketing campaign. The patented Z2 is a unique, all-in-one Wi-Fi messaging device that leverages Wi-Fi technology to enable heavy messaging teens and pre-teens to stay connected with their friends without the hassles of being tied to the family computer or incurring high messaging bills on a cell phone.

2008 Innovation in Education Award

Furman University Dept. of Chemistry

The students of Furman University’s Chemistry department have created a high-quality e-textbook with its Bio-organic Wiki Textbook project. As a result in the change to the sequence of organic chemistry courses, a new teaching track was developed in which no textbook existed. Using a free wiki engine, a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit content using any browser, we created a platform through which students could write, referee and modify an e-textbook, with as little faculty input as possible. More than 100 students collaborated to successfully complete this e-textbook for the organic chemistry course.

2008 Community Service Award

Enallage Communications

Enallage Communications, based in Easley, provides documentation, illustration and other technical services to Upstate clients. In 2007, Enallage developed a software application, the PRIDE Information Manager, for an Upstate non-profit to help streamline its functions. The program was implemented by the organization Providing Resources in Developmental Education, or PRIDE. PRIDE sends out monthly developmental milestone cards to more than 3,000 families across the Upstate, in both English and Spanish, to help families catch missed academic milestones in their children and to encourage them to take early action.

2008 Small Enterprise Award

CreatiVasc

CreatiVasc Medical is a Greenville company that provides innovative, easy-to-use and intuitive vascular technologies for solving the universal problem of connecting patients to kidney dialysis machines. Founded in 2004, CreatiVasc has a five member board including Dr. David L. Cull, MD, a nationally recognized surgeon and Chief Research Editor for the Greenville Hospital System. The challenge with connecting patients to dialysis machines includes finding arteries and veins that traditionally are located using tactile skills to feel vibrations of blood flowing through arteries or veins.

The US Treasury and Federal banking regulators say as many as eighteen hundred publicly held institutions could apply in the next few weeks for government investments as a part of the $700 billion Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This program is designed to assist banks with needed liquidity and capital so that they may resume meeting the banking needs of borrowers and depositors.

The Bank of South Carolina Corporation, (Nasdaq: BKSC) the parent company of The Bank of South Carolina, elected to opt out of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) because its financial health does not necessitate any government investment. The Bank is sufficiently liquid and capitalized with strong asset quality and earnings. All of these factors allow The Bank of South Carolina to continue as normal: making loans, receiving deposits and providing banking service to the community.

Hugh C. Lane, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer stated: “The Bank of South Carolina is electing not to participate in the Treasury’s TARP. For twenty-one years, The Bank of South Carolina has followed the critically important fundamentals of banking, priding itself on wise investment strategies, valuable asset quality and a strong liquidity position. Because of these fundamentally sound banking practices it is unnecessary for The Bank of South Carolina to participate in TARP.”

The Bank of South Carolina, a De Novo Charter, which opened in 1987 at 256 Meeting Street, has offices in Summerville, Mt. Pleasant, and the West Ashley community. It is also available on its website at www.banksc.com. Bank of South Carolina Corporation currently trades its common stock on the NASDAQ stock market under the symbol “BKSC”. Market makers for the stock for Bank of South Carolina Corporation are: Alternate Display Facility, Archipelago Stock Exchange, Automated Trading Desk, Citadel Derivative Group, LLC, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., Hill, Thompson, Magid and Company, Howe Barnes Investments, Hudson Securities, Inc., JJB Hilliard WL Lyons, Knight Equity Markets, LP, Merrill Lynch, Monroe Securities Inc., Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc., Nasdaq Execution Services, LLC, Sandler O’Neill & Partners, Scott & Stringfellow, Inc., Stern, Agee & Leach, Inc., Susquehanna Financial Group, LLP, Susquehanna Financial Group and USB Securities, LLC.

via: Bank of South Carolina