Tagged: ithaca

International Climbing Machines (ICM) has its headquarters in a shabby warehouse on the outskirts of Ithaca.

The workshop is hardly bigger than a three-car garage. Metal shelves filled with spare parts line the walls, and in one corner there’s enough space for company president Sam Maggio to show off his device.

It’s called a climber.

“We simply put a vacuum motor, a standard industrial vacuum motor, on the body of the climber and that establishes a vacuum in the chamber that’s in the center of the climber,” says Maggio.

That vacuum keeps the 25-pound robot stuck to the wall while it climbs, just like Spiderman. But the robot doesn’t look like Spiderman. It looks like a sump pump with a two-foot long metal body and rubber tracks on either side.

Workers operate it with a Playstation controller.

Ron Paul’s presidential campaign came to Cornell University Thursday ahead of next week’s all-but-decided New York Republican primary.

Congressman Paul’s speech felt less like a Republican presidential stump speech than half-lecture and half-rally cry.

Since early 2011, Cornell University has been getting almost all of its heat and power from natural gas.

No longer do they have to truck in 65,000 tons of coal from Kentucky and West Virginia. No longer do they buy most of their power from the grid.

The $82 million transition to natural gas has shuttered the soot-covered corner of the plant where coal used to be turned into heat.

A new, natural gas-powered section, with its computerized emissions monitoring, shiny pipes and modern control room, feels like a break from the past as soon as you walk in.