Strange Riverbed Fellows?

IBM partners with New York institute to create river-research center

Tech giant IBM is partnering with a state-financed science organization in New York to create a cutting-edge river research center. The project, launched with the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, will tap into the mad skillz of IBM engineers to provide 24-hour data collection along the Hudson River's 315-mile reach. Its organizers hope the resulting information will be used for both educational and business purposes; they also hope to spread their technology around the world, once they perfect it. "We each hope to discover a lot of things along the way," said Harry R. Kolar of IBM's Global Engineering Solutions division. "This is not a typical project." Addressing a breathless reporter's question about the oddity of a corporate-environmental partnership, Beacon Institute Director John Cronin said, "I don't see this as two different groups of people. There isn't room for permanent enemies anymore."