HPC in the News
SDSC/UC San Diego Achieves a Hat Trick with 2014 HPCwire Awards
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has achieved a hat trick in garnering three awards for its university-wide WIFIRE project as part of the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards presented at the 2014 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC14), in New Orleans, Louisiana. SDSC this week received the three awards in three separate categories for the WIFIRE project, the result of a multi-year, $2.65 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a cyberinfrastructure to find ways to more effectively monitor, predict, and mitigate wildfires. For more information, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR111914_hpcwire_awards.html.
255 Terabits/s: Researchers Demonstrate Record Data Transmission Over New Type of Fiber
Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands and the University of Central Florida (CREOL) in the USA, report in the journal Nature Photonics the successful transmission of a record high 255 Terabits/s over a new type of fibre allowing 21 times more bandwidth than currently available in communication networks. This new type of fibre could be an answer to mitigating the impending optical Our data hungry society Due to the popularity of Internet services and emerging network of capacity-hungry datacentres, demand for telecommunication bandwidth is expected to continue at an exponential rate. To transmit more information through current optical glass fibers, an option is to increase the power of the signals to overcome the losses inherent in the glass from which the fiber is manufactured. However, this produces unwanted photonic nonlinear effects, which limit the amount of information that can be recovered after transmission over the standard fiber. transmission capacity crunch caused by the increasing bandwidth demand. To read further, please visit http://www.tue.nl/en/university/departments/electrical-engineering/research/research-institutes/research-institute-cobra/news/30-10-2014-255-terabitss-researchers-demonstrate-record-data-transmission-over-new-type-of-fiber/.
Announcing the 2015 LittleFe Buildout at SIGCSE!!
March 4, 2015 - Kansas City, Missouri
Application Deadline – January 7, 2013
In collaboration with the symposium event for the SIGCSE 2015 symposium March 4-8, 2015
Apply for a FREE LittleFe mini-cluster for your educational institution to use for teaching parallel programming, cluster computing, and Computational/Data Enabled Science and Engineering (CDESE) to your students and colleagues! LittleFe is a portable mini-cluster, which is small enough to fit in a suitcase, is light enough to easily move between classrooms, and travels as standard checked baggage to conferences and workshops. Applicants should be teams of two people, either two collaborating faculty members, not necessarily at the same institution, or one faculty member and one student (undergraduate or graduate) at the same institution. Three-person teams can also be accommodated, provided one of the participants is a faculty member. Applicants will be selected based on criteria of likelihood of success, reach (in terms of classes/students that will be taught, especially to minority and underserved populations). For full details about this opportunity, please see http://littlefe.net/buildout. If you have any questions, please send them to littlefe-developers@littlefe.net.
Stanford President Has 4 Ideas for Boosting Women in Tech
Forbes
Stanford University president John Hennessy's speech at Intel Capital's recent annual summit focused on four barriers he says are preventing gender equality in the technology industry and his proposed solutions for each. Hennessy says, "Our system is broken somewhere between middle school and high school," noting that in elementary school girls do slightly better than boys in math and science, but they fall behind in early adolescence. Hennessy recommends finding better role models and inspiration for girls. Hennessy also criticizes the rise of the "gamification culture," which he says puts a heavy emphasis on killing. Although boys may like these types of games, he says most girls do not find them attractive. However, he notes the problem may be fixing itself as today's computers now provide a gateway to social media, which has high levels of engagement by girls. Hennessy's third concern is the "isolation effect" at universities, especially for female students who may end up being the only woman in a high-level math or science course of 30 people. To read further, please visit http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/11/04/stanford-president-has-4-ideas-for-boosting-women-in-tech/.
XSEDE Partners in the News
SDSC’s Chaitan Baru Named CISE Data Science Advisor at NSF
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Chaitan Baru, a Distinguished Scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, Senior Advisor for Data Science in the agency’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE). Baru was Associate Director for Data Initiatives at SDSC, and is now on assignment in his new position with the NSF in the greater Washington DC area. He will serve as advisor to the CISE Directorate, assisting in cross-directorate and interagency efforts pertaining to what has become known as ‘Big Data’, or what the NSF describes as “large, diverse, complex, longitudinal, and/or distributed datasets generated from instruments, sensors, Internet transactions, email, video, click streams, and/or all other digital sources available today and in the future.” To read further, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR102914_cbaru_nsf.html.
Research News From Around the World
UC San Diego Computer Scientists Triumph at Data Processing Competition
After a two-year hiatus, a team from the Center for Networked Systems (CNS) at the University of California, San Diego came roaring back to set three new world records in a data processing competition for industry and academe. CNS associate director George Porter, former CNS director Amin Vahdat (now at Google), and Computer Science and Engineering Ph.D. student Michael Conley set a world record in the 100 Terabyte Daytona (think speed) GraySort category. They outperformed everyone else, sorting 100 TB in less than 23 minutes, but tied with the startup company Databricks (which sorted the same amount of data in 23.4 minutes). Both used the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). To read further, please visit http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=2443.
TACC Receives Honor in 2014 HPCwire Awards
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin has been recognized in the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards, presented at the 2014 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC14), in New Orleans, Louisiana. The list of winners were revealed at the HPCwire booth at the event, and on the HPCwire website, located at HPCwire. TACC was recognized with the following honor:In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January 2014, NREL modeled a new enzyme that could significantly speed up the process by which cellulose is broken down. The enzyme represents an important, unique discovery in the multitude of carbohydrate-active enzymes because of its prevalence in nature and importance to cost-effective biomass deconstruction. Using TACC’s Stampede supercomputer, the researchers examined two catalytic mechanisms that suggest that fungal enzymes exhibit a copper-oxyl mediated, oxygen rebound mechanism. The research team is using Stampede to design chemical catalysts for high-temperature deoxygenation chemistry, which is important to convert biomass to fuels. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/tacc-receives-honor-2014-hpcwire-awards/.
Educator News and Opportunities
Computer Science Education Week
December 8 – 14 - is quickly approaching!
CSEdWeek.org/CSteacher strives to showcases the range of computer science events and activities that are being held across the country! While you might have heard about the Hour of Code<http://hourofcode.com/us>, CS Ed Week wants your help to share other computer science education activities. Visit the CS Ed Week website to see what others are doing and to get ideas for what you can do. If you are hosting an event or activity, Please add it to the event calendar and help build this resource for others! Follow the conversation on twitter @csedweek. For more information, please visit http://csedweek.org/csteacher.
Computer Science Teachers Association
Announcing CSTA Board of Directors Elections - Call for Applications/Nominations
Application Deadline - February 1, 2015 (midnight PST)
The following CSTA Director positions will be vacated on May 31, 2015. We encourage interested CSTA members to apply or to encourage other qualified members to submit an application. Late nominations will not be accepted.
• K-8 Representative (1 position): a classroom teacher who is currently teaching or promoting computer science at the pre-high school level.
• 9-12 Representative (1 position): A 9-12 classroom teacher who is currently teaching computer science at the high school level.
• At-Large Representative (1 position): An educator with responsibilities for K-12 CS education.
The CSTA Board is a working Board. All Directors are required to attend two face-to-face Board meetings per year (including the combined Board Meeting and CSTA Conference on July 12-17, 2015) and are expected to contribute meaningfully by participating on at least two committees. Directors are required to participate in the following Board events in Grapevine, Texas:
- July 12, 2015: New Board Member Orientation
- July 13-14, 2015: CSTA Annual Conference
- July 15, 2015 CSTA Committee Meetings
- July 16-17, 2015: Full Board meeting
For more information, please visit at:www.csta.acm.org/About/sub/AboutFiles/2015Election.html
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Student Engagement and Opportunities
An Hour of Code, featuring Anna and Elsa from Frozen!
Let's use code to join Anna and Elsa as they explore the magic and beauty of ice. You will create snowflakes and patterns as you ice-skate and make a winter wonderland that you can then share with your friends! This tutorial is in beta. It is subject to revision as feedback is received and improvements are made. Give it a try at http://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1.
Movement Improves Girls' Computational Skills
Clemson University
Clemson University researchers have developed Virtual Environment Interactions (VEnvI), a software and curriculum combination for blending movement and programming. The researchers say VEnvI offers a novel and embodied strategy of engaging fifth- and sixth-grade girls in computational thinking. "We want to understand how body syntonicity might enable young learners to bootstrap their intuitive knowledge in order to program a three-dimensional character to perform movements," says Clemson professor Alison Leonard. The researchers conducted user-centered design research for creating choreography and the social context for a virtual character through which girls can be introduced to alternative applications in computing. "We adopt the view that computational thinking is a set of concepts, practices, and perspectives that draw upon the world of computing and are applicable in many [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] fields," says Clemson professor Shaundra Daily. To read further, please visit http://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/dance-choreography-improves-girls-computational-skills/.
Computer Game Could Help Visually-Impaired Children Live Independently
University of Lincoln
University of Lincoln researchers are developing Eyelander; a computer game they say could help visually impaired children lead independent lives. The game focuses on improving the functional vision of children who have sight issues due to a brain injury rather than damage to the eye itself. "We are tapping into the brain's innate ability to adapt (also known as neuroplasticity), and because substantial changes in vision are possible even into adulthood, this could yield real results," says Lincoln computational neuroscientist Jonathan Waddington. He says the game combines scientific knowledge of neuroscience and psychology with expertise in game development. "Clinical trials will get under way this summer to evaluate whether the software could become a valuable new tool for the treatment of children and young adults with visual impairments," Waddington says. To read further, please visit http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/news/2014/10/993.asp.
Computational Science News of Interest
Computers Are Learning to See the World Like We Do
New Scientist
Object recognition is challenging for computers, but artist Randall Munroe has launched a website called Park or Bird on Flickr intended to determine whether a photo was taken in a national park or shows a bird. Users can drag a photograph into the page, and it will make an educated guess. Gerry Pesavento of Yahoo, which owns Flickr, says the site is "showing that image intelligence is happening very quickly." For the past year, Flickr has been training neural networks to determine if a given picture has one of 1,000 different objects in it, ranging from a cat to a sunset. If Flickr can resolve this problem, it will significantly improve the search function for its billions of photos, according to Yahoo. Users potentially could search for images of any item even if the photographer has not tagged it. To read further, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429932.300-computers-are-learning-to-see-the-world-like-we-do.html#.VHDa24c2SnA.
Georgia Tech: Computers Could Talk Themselves Into Giving Up Secrets
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology say they have found numerous security flaws that could allow malicious hackers to seize control of PCs and smartphones through the use of voice-control features, including those designed to make the devices easier for disabled individuals to use. In research that will be presented at the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security this week in Scottsdale, AZ, the researchers describe 12 methods of subverting devices running the Android, iOS, Windows, or Ubuntu Linux operating systems (OSes), in some cases using methods that would not require any physical contact with the device. One attack uses malware that leverages Windows Speech Recognition to talk its way into running commands that would normally require a higher level of privilege, while another involves subverting the voiceprint feature of Android's Google Now digital assistant to access a device and then using generic text-to-speech apps to issue commands as if it were the user. To read further, please visit http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532121/computers-could-talk-themselves-into-giving-up-secrets/.
Social Media
The New Thing in Google Flu Trends Is Traditional Data
The New York Times
Google recently announced it is overhauling its Flu Trends service to harness more traditional medical data, which has long been used to track and predict the flu season. Flu Trends was an early example of the potential for the use of big data after it was able to successfully predict the severity of the H1N1 flu outbreak two weeks ahead of official statistics in 2009. The service monitors flu-related search terms on the theory they will correlate with actual rates of flu infections. However, Flu Trends has had mixed success in recent years. In an article published in Science magazine this year, a group of quantitative social scientists found Flu Trends tends to overestimate the number of reported flu cases, most famously during the 2012-2013 flu season, when it greatly overestimated the number of reported cases. To read further, please visit http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/the-new-thing-in-google-flu-trends-is-traditional-data/?_r=0
