Homeless in Arizona

It's the new building just east of the College of Law. It's on the south east corner of Terrance Road and McAllister Avenue. Terrance Road used to go thru to Rural, but when they build this build they closed off Terrance Road.

Of course the building a huge waste of tax dollars, but I should get to see how our royal government rulers are p*ssing away our hard earned money.

Source

ASU new science, technology building to offer peek at lab work

by Anne Ryman - Sept. 19, 2012 10:04 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

Arizona State University opened its most expensive building to date on Wednesday, a seven-story research facility that houses dozens of high-tech laboratories devoted to space-science, renewable-energy and security and defense research.

Unlike most university buildings, where research is tucked away, the first two floors of the $185 million facility feature educational exhibits and glass-walled labs where the public can see scientists at work. One of the most notable exhibits is just inside the front door: a life-size replica of the Mars rover Curiosity, a craft that landed on the Red Planet in August. The rover has links to ASU because several scientists and alumni are on teams that operate Curiosity's instruments.

ASU officials planned the areas to give the public a look at what goes on behind the scenes.

"We want to use this building to motivate and inspire youth," said Sethuraman Panchanathan, senior vice president with ASU's Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.

The facility, called the Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building IV, was a long time in the making. The Arizona Board of Regents approved the project in 2008 even though the economy was in a nosedive.

Some regents had reservations about constructing buildings while the state cut the university's operating budget. ASU officials argued that the facility was necessary to expand research in vital areas.

Funding for the building came from research grants in which a portion of the grants could be used for capital expenses.

ASU officials say the building is the university's most expensive to date because of its size and specialized research functions. The facility is the largest research building on the Tempe campus, covering 293,000 square feet with 166 labs housed within its walls.

The expanded research space helps attract new scientists with grant funding, university officials say, and the benefits extend well beyond academia and into the local economy. Scientific discoveries can lead to patents and then startup companies that create jobs. Existing research also benefits from more and better space, they say.

The new building "is actually enabling our ability to really ramp up our space-based research," said Kip Hodges, director of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

One of the most notable initial projects will be construction of an instrument for NASA's OSIRIS-REx, an unmanned spacecraft that will visit an asteroid after 2016 and return with a sample to Earth. The instrument will help scientists survey the asteroid and pick the best place to retrieve a sample. Visitors to the ASU building will be able to watch the instrument being assembled through windows in a first-floor lab.

In the past, space instruments have been built in California because universities typically don't have the facilities, said ASU professor Phil Christensen, who is building the instrument.

"The dream of mine has been ... to do this here on the ASU campus," he said.

In another lab, researchers are doing work for the Mars rovers Opportunity and Curiosity.

ASU professor Jim Bell is the lead scientist for the color cameras aboard Opportunity. He also is a science-team member for the newer Curiosity rover. He jokes that his former research space was the size of a "broom closet."

In the new building, Bell shares a glassed-in lab on the first floor. On Wednesday, he and a half-dozen other scientists pored over images that had been downloaded from Opportunity.

The concrete building, accented inside with red brick and wood, is designed to give an open feel, using glass and natural light to encourage faculty and students to connect, said Steven Ehrlich, one of the architects.

The carpet in the five-story atrium has a special scientific touch. Each square contains the image of a different crater on Mars, the moon and Earth. The images were taken by ASU instruments, and scientists picked out their favorite images to become part of the rug.

At Wednesday's grand opening, ASU President Michael Crow said the building will allow researchers to move forward on many levels, including making new discoveries and teaching the next generation.

"The way for us to be successful as a society is to teach the next generation better than we were taught, to enable them to do things that we couldn't do and can't do and can't conceptualize," he told the crowd gathered outside the building.

After Crow's remarks, a three-wheeled robot called RAVEN rolled through the ribbon in front of the building, "cutting" the ribbon and officially opening the facility.