NCET

Entrepreneurs from Northern Nevada took second- and third-place honors in the 2008 Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition.

In the undergraduate division:
Wolfpack Works of the University of Nevada, Reno won second place and $10,000 for its presentation on a plan to produce a touch-screen speech-enhancing device for people with communication disabilities.
KG BioSolutions of Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village won third place and $5,000 for its plans to develop an on-site generator that provides a restaurant with supplemental electricity from used fryer oil.

In the graduate division:
Go Green Outdoors from UNR won second place and $10,000 for its online resource center for green culture news, information and user forum.
More Water Company, also a venture by UNR students, won third place and $5,000 for its presentation on technology to produce drinking water from the air, helping diminish the impact on lakes and streams.

More Water Company, also a venture by UNR students, won third place and $5,000 for its presentation on technology to produce drinking water from the air, helping diminish the impact on lakes and streams.

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The city of Reno showed its “green” side last week as several city-owned alternative-fuel vehicles and machines were on display at 10 N. Virginia St. The goal, officials said, was to highlight the city’s commitment to make environmentally-friendly practices a top priority.

About a dozen vehicles were on display including Toyota Prius hybrid cars, a diesel Kubota 4X4 that is solar-powered and an ethanol E85 police car that runs on 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol, said Bruce Mullin, fleet manager for the city’s public works department.

Other machines on display were a solar-powered message board and a yellow Zap scooter that is powered by a 36-volt hub motor that city employees joyfully rode around the plaza.

“We want to give information to city employees and the general public about how there are alternatives available to reduce our carbon footprint,” Mullin said.

The city has about 750 pieces of green equipment and vehicles in its fleet, he said. He said the city saves 35,000 gallons of gasoline a year by using alternative energy.

“There aren’t locally many places to get ethanol (a biofuel produced from crops such as corn),” Mullin said. “So, we’re building up our fleet of alternative-fuel vehicles to bring in vendors.”

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Here in Las Vegas, we thrive on a frenetic pace of life.

Our prosperity hinges on our ability to get almost anything at any time. We work into the wee hours, hit the blackjack tables at 2 a.m., eat breakfast at the Korean barbecue joint.

So it might seem only natural that our valley’s public colleges are on the menu of 24-hour offerings, competing in what was once the domain of for-profit giants such as the University of Phoenix.

The College of Southern Nevada offers 20 degrees online in fields from accounting to dental hygiene. It even has a program in online teaching, six classes that can be completed — online of course — to become certified as an online teacher. Read more:

Technorati Tags: University of Phoenix, College of Southern Nevada, UNLV, Nevada State College, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Jonathan Adams, Margaret DeFleur, Tom Haynie, Manpower of Southern Nevada, Roxanna Scaglione, Florida State University, Yolanda Hernandez, Ralph Buechler, Joe Tabios, NCET, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, Las Vegas Sun, technology

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In the green room at New Horizons Academy, students walk on carpet manufactured from recycled soda bottles.

They learn in natural light collected by a solar dish and piped indoors via fiber-optic cables.

They’re surrounded by walls coated in nontoxic paint.

If the private K-12 school can raise $795,000 by Sept. 1, New Horizons’ one green classroom will be replicated campus-wide.

“We’re small, but it’s a global effort,” teacher Donna Gannon said Tuesday.

New Horizons chose Earth Day to announce both its fundraising effort and its intent to become the most eco-friendly school in Nevada. Read full story:

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Universant Corp. is no longer flying under the radar. Judges voted the Reno company winner at the annual “Under the Radar” conference in Silicon Valley last month.

The conference is a good place to get traction with investors and bloggers, say Craig Macy, chief executive officer and Joe Hage, chairman. And they count on the windfall of publicity that accompanies the award to propel their company’s growth.

The winning software is Universant Application Design Studio. The developers describe it as, “Something complicated that got simplified.”

As examples, they point to word processing programs that hide complex programming code behind drop-down menus. Web page editors do the same for Internet sites.

However, software designers still write raw code for each new program. Universant, say its developers, provides an end-run around that tedious process. Read more:

Technorati Tags: Pat Patera, Northern Nevada Business Weekly, NCET, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, Universant Corp., Craig Macy, Joe Hage, Universant Application Design Studio, Raymond Lin, technology, Application Design Studio, Microsoft Acceleration Program

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