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PHOTO GALLERY: Click through to see Illinois Tech's smart farm.
A garden at Illinois Tech is sprouting with broccoli, kale and an assortment of flowers — but its real job is to allow students to build out clean energy sources and test smart farming technologies.
UFarmIIT, a 5,000-square-foot garden on campus, started out six years ago as a collaborative project with professors and students from different disciplines. Now, UFarmIIT is developing into a smart farm the university hopes can prove concepts that will one day ease the pains of farming in cities.
The challenge is doing all of that without creating waste, said Hamid Arastoopour, engineering professor and director of the Wanger Institute for Sustainability and Energy Research, which helps fund and run the farm.
The farm is well on its way. Students built a shed in a corner of the farm last summer, said Merjem Mededovic, president of the student organization also called UFarmIIT. The Wagner Institute funded the installation of two solar panels on top of the shed in April.
Volunteers then dug shallow trenches around and under the raised beds, laid down pipes for a watering system and installed a water pump and valves. The solar panels will power the water pump, Mededovic said.
A group of electrical engineering and computer science students are programming a micro-controller inside the pump, teaching the valves to turn on and off automatically.
The Illinois Institute of Technology is launching a two-year Saturday MBA program this fall, teaming with the Chicago Innovation Awards to add a twist.
Eventually, sensors will be able to measure moisture in the soil and tell the water pump when the plants are thirsty, said Jimmy Shah, a recent electrical engineering graduate.
That concept itself is not new, Shah said, but that’s where the testing aspect of UFarmIIT comes in.
Shah worked with the Center for Smart Grid Applications, Research and Technology, a lab at Illinois Tech. The students have a battery they plan to hook up to the solar panels as well, to store solar power for use when it’s not so sunny.
“We’re going to have so much power, you’re going to be able to use it for phone charging, too,” Shah said.
The hope is to feed extra power generated at UFarmIIT into the grid, Arastoopur said, and gather data on how much renewable energy an urban farm needs. Proving the students’ and faculty’s concepts will help secure funding to help the farm advance.
Plans are already cooking to add a water tank to the farm, further the compost system and incorporate aquaponics, a system that uses fish waste to grow plants.
Illinois Tech is known for its clean-tech innovation. Researchers there are helping ComEd build its microgrid in Bronzeville. The school’s own microgrid was completed in 2013 and has everything it needs to operate campus’ more than 50 buildings independently from the grid.
UFarmIIT is the test bed for urban farming at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
The 5,000-square-foot garden started out six years ago as a collaborative project with professors and students from different disciplines.
Naydeene Edwards is a Ngoonooru-Wadjari woman who has learnt the hard way how powerful a tool money can be for Aboriginal people.
Despite working for the housing department in Western Australia, she and her family have been homeless four times.
"Home is what you make of it. It's where your family comes together. It's not just shelter. It's what gives you identity in the Aboriginal order really," Ms Edwards said.
While living in the Pilbara, she was making too much money with her job to qualify for public housing, but too little to afford a private rental.
"We worked hard, we did what we needed to do in order to provide, but we lived like most Australians, week-to-week, pay cheque to pay cheque providing for our family."
She had to camp out in caravans and stay with relatives for about a year.
"Once I actually got into a homeless predicament with my family, it caused so much mental, physical and spiritual stresses, on me and my young family.
"So I had to learn how to use the tool of money in order to benefit us."
Ms Edwards believes her journey towards achieving the Australian dream is a reflection of the struggles many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are facing when it comes to their relationship with money.
Ms Edwards was raised in Port Hedland by a white foster family because her mother, who was a member of the Stolen Generation, was not able to.
She said while she enjoyed her childhood, she suffered some mental health issues growing up from knowing little about her identity and culture.
She believes those experiences may have shaped her attitude towards money as an adult.
"We face gaps with employment, we face gaps with housing," she said.
"There's that lack of understanding of how money is a tool to help us get to where we want to get to.
"It's a tool for us to use to better ourselves, our family and our communities."
Research has shown Indigenous levels of financial literacy are lower than non-Indigenous Australians.
A 2015 OECD study found that half of Indigenous students had little basic knowledge around money, compared to 18 per cent of non-Indigenous teens.
Having never been shown how to budget and save up for a house, Ms Edwards taught herself while also seeking advice through government-funded Indigenous Business Australia and their home ownership program.
What do you know about money?
Money is an integral part of our lives and knowing the basics of the financial system is important. Take our quiz to test yourself.
It wasn't easy, but after cutting down her expenses and living on a tight budget for about five years she was finally able to make progress towards a deposit.
"When we got the keys and came into the house, we were like kids in a candy store. It was like Christmas!" Ms Edwards said.
There's plenty of demand for help around money.
Suwana Combo is the service co-ordinator at Mob Strong Debt Help — a free hotline service for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that's received 275 calls for help with debt or budgeting in the past year.
"Usually the calls are coming through for something completely different, and we'll have a yarn and then I can identify that there's debt," Ms Combo said.
"And it's not until the end of the conversation they'll admit that there's five debt collectors chasing them.
"We're always trying to break down those barriers and the stigma around the shame and fear of contacting a financial counsellor."
Ms Combo has also received complaints about companies targeting Indigenous people with poor financial literacy.
The banking royal commission last year heard a private company used aggressive tactics to sign Aboriginal families up for plans they couldn't afford.
"Our people, because of these policies and these funds, are being pushed into more financial hardship," Ms Combo said.
"They don't have the means to then go out and buy food, they don't have the means to go out and do those little things, whether it's putting your kid on a school excursion or helping to contribute to a funeral expense, or even just those everyday bills around electricity and gas," she said.
The census in 2016 showed the average income for Aboriginal people over 15 was $438 per week, compared to $662 for the rest of the population, while unemployment was at 20 per cent — about three times higher than the overall rate.
Ms Combo said Indigenous people are more likely to share their money in hard times, which can sometimes lead to more financial stress.
"There's always that cultural, family obligation. When someone passes away the family will come together and usually its expected of you to contribute, and sometimes you can't contribute.
"If you don't have the financial funds to be able to do that they'll start looking at other way to pay for those things like accessing super early."
Yamatji-Bunuba woman Kirra Grimes believes there are plenty of unfair stereotypes of Aboriginal people that might make them reluctant to talk about money.
"We often get 'oh you just bludge off the Government', but I think that's not always the case because there are a lot of us out there like myself who do have full-time employment and don't rely on the Government to provide extra funding to live," Ms Grimes said.
"I definitely suggest to other fullas to ask for help — don't be [ashamed] … if you break it down it's not as scary as some people find it to be."
Ms Grimes realised she had to change her spending habits when she became a young mum at 20.
"I was just running around buying clothes and takeaway food and spending my money with friends so I wasn't financially ready, really."
The responsibility of raising her son Kai with little financial help prompted Kirra to do some research around money and budgeting. She also sought some advice from a financial institution, and said using spreadsheets helps her keep track of her spending.
Like the rest of Australia, there's a growing push in the Indigenous community to empower people to better manage their income.
Ben Eisikovich, of Kamilaroi heritage, is one of about 50 trained Indigenous accountants in Australia, and is currently working at the BT Financial Group.
He was inspired to seek a career in finance by his mum, and said more Aboriginal representation in the industry is only going to help communities.
"I envision seeing a lot more black accountants in boardrooms, and community companies really bringing our issues to the table. I think that would be amazing."
When Robin Dougherty was 73, a lifetime of bad money habits caught up with her. Now she wants people to start getting interested in their money sooner.
Mr Eisikovich said there's a need for solutions in remote communities, where Aboriginal people may have travel long distances just to use a bank.
He said there should be more Indigenous people with ties to the community to provide advice around money at the family level, and also bigger picture when managing land trusts, government grants and native title claims.
"No-one's taken the time out to explain how to manage finances. When we receive money what should we be doing with that?
"I feel like if you have someone from that community who wants to learn these skills and take them back to the community and try and make the place better, that would change a lot of things."
Ms Edwards is also passionate about passing on the lessons she learnt and has started a business offering tenancy education and basic budgeting strategies to people in her community, especially those struggling with housing.
"The systems set us up to fail, because it's all about the numbers game and everyone's a statistic.
"If someone had taught me the power of money when I was younger I might not have gotten into that homeless predicament, and I might have been able to achieve these things a lot earlier than when I did."
Quiz: How much do you know about money?
Many among the million-plus refugees wonder whether, with their new lives and jobs, they will be going back some day.
The war in Syria has forced millions of people to leave their homes, with over a million in neighbouring Lebanon. They tell the stories of their new lives and jobs and explain how the conflict has affected their lives. As Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr reports from Beirut, many of them wonder whether they will be able to go ...
The experiments show that the optically induced switching of the magnetic regions begins much faster than conventional switching and proceeds in a more complex way than scientists had thought – a level of detail long sought by the data storage industry, which is eager to learn more about the key drivers of optical swit...
"This is really one of the first examples of new materials science that can be done with LCLS, which allows you to look at very short time scales and very small length scales," said Hermann Dürr, a staff scientist for the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) and a principal investigator of the m...
The experiments were performed on tiny samples of a metallic alloy containing iron, cobalt and gadolinium, a combination singled out years ago by the data storage industry for its unique magnetic properties.
In magnetic storage devices, information is stored and retrieved by quickly flipping the orientations of electrons' spin – which have two possible directions, similar to the poles of a magnet – to produce the equivalent of "ones" and "zeroes." In conventional devices this is done by applying an electrical current or ma...
In the LCLS experiments, scientists started the switching process by hitting a sample with ultrafast pulses of visible light. Then they hit the same sample with a carefully timed pulse from the LCLS X-ray laser, and used a technique called X-ray scattering to probe the evolution of the switching process during the firs...
The results showed that the optical laser flipped the magnetic state of the material up to 1,000 times faster, as well as more efficiently, than magnetic switching used in current commercial devices.
The experiments also revealed that the elements within the sample were distributed less uniformly at the nanoscale than previously believed, and that this strongly affected the switching process.
The sample was found to contain tiny regions that were rich in iron or gadolinium. In the instant following the optical laser pulse, the electron spins of the two types of regions began to interact and align. This "spin current" flowed most actively from iron-rich to smaller gadolinium-rich areas, which appeared to ser...
"People are trying to understand how laser light interacts with spins on these ultrafast timescales in magnetic materials," said Catherine Graves, a graduate student in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University who was a lead author of the research paper. "If you can understand why these areas are acting...
The varied landscape of the material at the nanoscale was unexpected, Graves added: "Nobody thought they would see this variation in the material" or realized it would greatly impact the optical switching process.
The team of researchers is planning follow-up LCLS experiments using faster detectors and a variety of samples, with a goal of finding better-optimized materials for optical switching at the nanoscale and better understanding and optimizing the switching process.
"There is still so much to learn about ultrafast magnetic processes," said Alexander Reid, a SIMES research associate and another lead author of the research paper. "People are still trying to understand the mechanisms. This gives us a very nice piece of the puzzle."
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Collaborators in the research were from SLAC's LCLS and SSRL; SIMES; Stanford University; Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands; Nihon University in Japan; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH); and the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY), Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL), PNSensor, Max P...
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"It was a blessing," talk show host Rush Limbaugh said of his good health news.
Honolulu, Hawaii (CNN) -- Tests that were performed on Rush Limbaugh after he was admitted to a Hawaii hospital for chest pains "found absolutely nothing wrong," the conservative talk show host said Friday.
"It was a blessing," Limbaugh, 58, said at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, where he was admitted Wednesday.
Doctors gave Limbaugh an angiogram Thursday that revealed no evidence of arterial or coronary disease, he said.
The cause of his pain -- which he called "real" -- has not been determined. He said one possibility is a spasm in an artery.
He was discharged from the hospital Friday.
Limbaugh said his ordeal started Wednesday afternoon, when he began experiencing pain in his upper left chest "like I've never experienced before."
He praised the care of the medical staff and called their work "confidence-inspiring."
"The treatment I received here was the best that the world has to offer," he said. "I don't think there's one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine."
Limbaugh said the experience was a good lesson as he approaches his 59th birthday January 12.
"It takes things like this in life to prepare you for the eventuality that you are getting older," he said. "You're not as young as you were and not as invincible as you once thought you were."
He urged anyone who experiences heart or chest pain to seek medical help immediately.

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