The UD Alumni Relations Blog has received word from sources that cannot be named that the full video will be released in early April in time to go head-to-head at the box office with Clash of the Titans and Date Night. And we must admit in our total confidence that the combined powers of Avi Amon ’08, Drew Rifkin and Kaitlin Sweeney ’04 will crush the Kraken and Tina Fey.

UD Admissions [udel.edu]
Delaware – The Musical [facebook.com]
Clash of the Titans [imdb.org]
Date Night [imdb.org]

But nothing prepared us for the shock of seeing the surface at the University of Delaware’s Fred Rust Ice Arena turned green.

After we were assured that this was not the beginning of the alien invasion, we stop screaming long enough to realize the new surface looked pretty cool. Having always wanted to be slimed throughout our childhoods, falling on green ice was pretty close for the blog.

Painting the ice took 15 hours and James Kaden, manager of UD’s ice arenas, said, “Everyone was excited about painting the ice for the holidays. If this is well received, we may look to expand to other events and/or holidays.”

May we humbly suggest going with hot pink or a flames motif in the future.

UD’s Rust Ice Arena goes green for the holidays [udel.edu/udaily]

A photovoltaic cell from UD was joined by a cell made by Aussie scientists from the University of New South Wales as well as four cells developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Emcore Corporation from the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.  Combined, these five cells, each optimized for different parts of the light spectrum, combined to set the record.

The UD Alumni Relations Blog toasts this achievement and looks forward to accompanying any and all UD delegations to Australia to celebrate this world record.  We’ve seen Crocodile Dundee and Kangaroo Jack dozens of times and we can’t wait to hang out with witty, tough Aussies and wily kangaroos!

The research to be published in the journal Progress in Photovoltaics (our favorite!) in September.

Aussies help set new solar power world record [gmagazine.com.au]
University of New South Wales [unsw.edu.au]
National Renewable Energy Laboratory [nrel.gov]
Emcore Corporation [emcore.com]

Now the UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE) is taking steps to harness the force of the wind.

"Going to take pollution down to zero."

The CEOE’s next Ocean Currents Lecture, to be held Tuesday, July 28, at 7 p.m. in Room 104 of Cannon Lab at the Lewes campus will explore the idea further.

The lecture, “A Wind Turbine at the UD Campus in Lewes: An Opportunity for Research, Education, and Public Service,” is free and open to the public.

The talk will discuss the results of an study on the feasibility of placing a turbine on the campus, the next steps in the project and what its development could mean for the campus and the community.

If the turbine is built, UD will have the powers of earth, fire, wind and water, leaving heart as the lone missing piece of the puzzle.

UD Center for Energy & Environmental Policy [ceep.udel.edu]
UD lecture to explore land-based wind turbine on Sharp Campus [sussexcountian.com]
UD College of Earth, Ocean and Environment [ceoe.udel.edu]

Irene Felker, administrative assistant of Dining Services, stated in an e-mail message to the UD Review the reasoning behind going trayless.

“It was found that it takes between one-third and one-half gallon of heated water to properly clean a tray using a dishwasher,” she said. “It was also found that the average person reduced the amount of food waste per meal by two ounces. With thousands of meals served per day, even the smallest amounts of savings will result in significant contributions in waste and energy reduction.”

While the UD Alumni Relations Blog is a shameless glutton that uses a front-end loader to fill our plate at all-you-can-eat buffets, we can only applaud the idea of going trayless to conserve water and it’s an added bonus if we cut a few kilos to boot.

On top of being an overweight behemoth, the UDAR Blog is quite the prognosticator and we’re pretty sure that once we’ve figured out an alternative to oil, the resource to be fought over will surely be H20 so if we can save a little water now to put off the inevitable water wars for a decade or two, we’re all for it.

Without Cafeteria Trays, Colleges Find Savings [nytimes.com]