HPC in the News
Spread the Word: Blue Waters Internship Program
Application Deadline - March 20, 2015
As part of the Blue Waters efforts to motivate and train the next generation of supercomputing researchers, the program is sponsoring 20 undergraduate research interns each year. The goal is to engage undergraduate students in petascale computing research and development projects. The program provides each student a stipend totaling $5000 and a two-week intensive high-performance computing workshop. Select students will travel to The Blue Waters Symposium. This program includes support for undergraduate internship activities at any accredited degree granting institution in the United States. The internships awarded through this program may be for students working with a faculty mentor on their home campus, or at another campus. Interested faculty can work with a particular student that they identify, or may select a qualified student with Blue Waters support through our program. For complete information, please visit https://bluewaters.ncsa.illinois.edu/internships.
Oregon State University Online Parallel Programming Class
March 30 - June 5, 2015
Oregon State University is taking its Desktop Parallel Programming course online through its award-winning Ecampus program. This will let you learn this important skill any time you'd like. This course is targeted towards:
- Computer Science students or recent graduates who want to see how to apply what they have been learning to the new multicore-based and GPU-based programming platforms.
- Mid-career CS people who could use some extra knowledge and experience to advance their careers.
Whether you are a game developer, an engineer, a chemist, a biologist, a physicist, etc., this is a great time to explore how to get more performance from your computer. For more information, please visit http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb/onlineparallelclass/.
MIT’s Evolutionary Approaches to Big-Data Problems
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) AnyScale Learning For All (ALFA) group investigates a wide range of big data challenges. ALFA focuses on working with raw data that comes directly from the source and then investigates the data with a variety of techniques, most of which involve scalable machine learning and evolutionary computing algorithms. "Machine learning is very useful for retrospectively looking back at the data to help you predict the future," says ALFA director Una-May O’Reilly. "Evolutionary computation can be used in the same way, and it's particularly well suited to large-scale problems with very high dimensions." Within the evolutionary field, O'Reilly has particular interest in genetic programming. "We distribute the genetic programming algorithms over many nodes and then factor the data across the nodes," she says. To read further, please visit http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/una-may-oreilly-evolutionary-approaches-big-data-problems-0114.
Eckert-Mauchly Award Nominations
Nominations Deadline - March 30, 2015
Co-sponsored by ACM and the IEEE Computer Society, the ACM/IEEE-CS Eckert-Mauchly Award is known as the computer architecture community's most prestigious award. It recognizes recipients for their outstanding contributions to computer and digital systems architecture with a certificate and $5,000. The award, initiated in 1979, was named for John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, who collaborated on the design and construction of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first large-scale electronic computing machine, which was completed in 1947. The award will be presented at the ISCA 2015 International Symposium in Portland, Oregon. To nominate a colleague, please visit http://www.computer.org/web/awards/eckert-mauchly.
XSEDE News from Partners and Friends
2015 International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences
June 21-26, 2015 - Toronto, Canada
Applications Deadline - March 11, 2015.
Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States are invited to apply for the sixth International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences, The summer school is sponsored by Compute/Calcul Canada, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) with funds from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (RIKEN AICS) in Japan. Leading American, European and Japanese computational scientists and HPC technologists will offer instruction on a variety of topics, including:
· HPC challenges by discipline (e.g., earth, life and materials sciences, physics)
· HPC programming proficiencies
· Performance analysis & profiling
· Algorithmic approaches & numerical libraries
· Data-intensive computing
· Scientific visualization
For complete information and to apply, please visit https://ihpcss2015.computecanada.ca.
XSEDE Sponsor Prospectus Available Now
XSEDE15 is a unique opportunity to promote products and services among decision makers, researchers, developers, leaders, innovators, educators, and students from a diverse array of national and international organizations. The XSEDE15 conference will provide a forum for discussion of challenges, opportunities, and solutions among HPC Center directors, computational scientists, researchers, engineers, students, educators, XSEDE staff, industry and government agency representatives from across the United States and internationally. Sponsoring XSEDE15 provides an opportunity for your organization to announce and promote your array of products and services to an influential international audience of cutting-edge technology developers, adopters, and decision makers. To find out more information on the Call for Participation and full sponsorship prospectus details, please visit http:///www.xsede.org/xsede15.
Call for Papers and Participation
Call for Papers: ICNC-FSKD 2015
August 15-17, 2015 - Zhangjiajie, China
Submission Deadline – March 15, 2015
ICNC-FSKD cordially invite you to submit a paper to the upcoming 2015 11th International Conference on Natural Computation (ICNC 2015) and 2015 12th International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery (FSKD 2015). As with the past ICNC-FSKD conferences, all papers in conference proceedings will be submitted to both EI Compendex and ISTP (ISI Proceedings), as well as IEEE Xplore. Extended versions of selected best papers will appear in an ICNC-FSKD special issue of International Journal on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, a SCI-index journal. For complete information, please visit http://icnc-fskd.hnu.edu.cn/.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
2015 Rice Oil & Gas HPC Workshop
March 4-5, 2015 – Houston, Texas
The Rice University Oil and Gas High Performance Computing (OG HPC) Workshop (Wednesday, March 4 and Thursday, March 5, 2015), is the premier meeting place for networking and discussion focused on computing and information technology challenges and needs in the oil and gas industry. To learn more, please visit http://rice2015.og-hpc.org/.
Research Data Alliance Fifth Plenary Meeting
March 8-11, 2015 - San Diego
The Research Data Alliance (RDA) was started in 2013 by a core group of interested agencies that include the European Commission, the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Australian Government’s Department of Innovation. With more than 2,500 individual members from 92 countries, RDA is dedicated to enabling and improving the open sharing of data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society. For more information, please visit https://rd-alliance.org.
Advancing Research Computing on Campuses: Best Practices Workshop
March 17-19, 2015 – Clemson, South Carolina
Professionals involved in operating and supporting campus shared research computing infrastructure are invited to participate in this sharing of experience and expertise. Proposed topics include:
· Best practices in advanced computing resources
· The condo model
· Business models
· Collaboration with researchers
· Return on investment
· Interactions with national data centers and infrastructures
In Partnership with Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitators (ACI-REF) and the National Center for Supercomputing. Applications (NCSA). For more information on the workshop, hotels, and registration, please visit our website http://citi.clemson.edu/arcc/.
The Second European Exascale Software Initiative (EESI2)
May 28 - 29, 2015 – Dublin, Ireland
held back-to-back with PRACEdays15
The main goals of EESI2 are to elaborate an evaluative European vision and roadmap and to propose recommendations to address the challenges of Extreme Data and Extreme Computing on the new generation of Exascale computers expected in 2020. More than 120 experts have been involved during the last two years on this project and documents including recommendations have already been published. The EESI2 project will present all its works, vision and recommendations to a large public in a final two days conference, on May 28 - 29, 2015 in Dublin. This major event is organized by SURFsara and funded by the European Commission. The public includes worldwide specialists, scientists, engineers, policy makers from different European member states and representatives of the European Commission. More information on the conference will be available soon on the EESI2 website (http://www.eesi-project.eu) and the PRACE website (http://www.prace-ri.eu/pracedays15/)
International Symposium on Grids and Clouds 2015
March 15~20, 2015 - Taipei, Taiwan
The International Symposium on Grids and Clouds (ISGC) 2015 will be held at Academia Sinica, with co-located events and workshops. The conference is hosted by the Academia Sinica Grid Computing Centre (ASGC). “Global e-Infrastructure for Global Challenges” is the theme of ISGC 2015. Nowadays, the world is facing complex and global challenges in climate, health, energy, safety that impact whole populations and that are not restricted by country borders. Being of continental or even transcontinental size, these challenges can be tackled only through collaboration between multiple user communities, crossing nations and regions. Such collaborations are complicated by fragmented research, where individual groups and nations merely solve isolated pieces of the global puzzle. While not a panacea, the global e-Infrastructure supporting international collaboration helps us work on the puzzle effectively, accessibly, and completely. For more information, please visit http://event.twgrid.org/isgc2015/http://event.twgrid.org/isgc2015/.
Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2015)
April 20-22, 2015 - Dublin, Ireland
The IICE is an international refereed conference dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practices in education. The IICE promotes collaborative excellence between academicians and professionals from Education. The aim of IICE is to provide an opportunity for academicians and professionals from various educational fields with cross-disciplinary interests to bridge the knowledge gap, promote research esteem and the evolution of pedagogy. The IICE-2015 invites research papers that encompass conceptual analysis, design implementation and performance evaluation. For complete information, please visit http://www.iicedu.org/.
The 42nd International Symposium on Computer Architecture )ISCA 2015)
June 13-17, 2015 – Portland, Oregon
The International Symposium on Computer Architecture is the premier forum for new ideas and experimental results in computer architecture. The conference specifically seeks particularly forward-looking and novel submissions. Papers were solicited on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:
- Processor, memory, and storage systems architecture
- Parallel and multicore systems
- Data-center scale computing
- Architectures for handheld and mobile devices
- Application-specific, reconfigurable, or embedded architectures
For complete information, please visit http://www.ece.cmu.edu/calcm/isca2015/cfp.php.
NSF CyberGIS All Hands Meeting
September 15-17, 2015 - Reston, Virginia
Dallas Peck Auditorium, The USGS National Center
The All Hands Meeting of the NSF CyberGIS project will bring together project institutions, partners, collaborators, and scientists from across the globe to share their progress and experience during the third project year, and discuss and plan CyberGIS activities for the upcoming years. For more information, please visit http://cybergis.cigi.uiuc.edu/cyberGISwiki/doku.php/ahm15/index.
Date Change: OKLAHOMA SUPERCOMPUTING SYMPOSIUM 2015
September 23, 2015 – Norman, Oklahoma
University of Oklahoma Norman campus
OSC would be delighted to have you participate. It's a great way tolearn what's happening on the advanced computing side of your research and teaching areas. Over the past 13 Symposia, we've had over 3000 attendees from
112 academic institutions from 27 US states and territories,
143 private companies, 37 government agencies (federal, state, municipal, foreign) and 20 non-governmental organizations
For more information and to register, please visit http://www.oscer.ou.edu/events.php.
Research News From Around the World
UT Austin, ORNL Research Points Way to Less Vulnerable Computer Memory
Researchers at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Arizona State University have built one of the three components of a ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET). The transistor promises to offer data storage that is quickly accessible and non-volatile. As part of the transistor that is open or closed, corresponding to the 0s and 1s in a computer's binary language, the gate would retain its state when no power is applied. Computing devices with memories built on FeFETs would be less vulnerable to losing information, and would boot up very quickly when turned on. The team developed a computer model of a crystal structure with the desired properties, and then used molecular beam epitaxy to grow a layer of barium titanate on a block of germanium. To read further, please visit https://cns.utexas.edu/news/new-research-points-way-to-less-vulnerable-computer-memory.
TACC Q&A: Modeling the Flu Virus
Historically, the influenza A virus has been responsible for millions of deaths worldwide each year. The persistence of seasonal H1N1 and H3N2 strains costs between 3,000 and 49,000 lives annually in the United States alone. Influenza pandemics, or global circulations of highly transmissible and pathogenic viral strains, have occurred four times in the past century. The 1918 H1N1 Spanish Flu was particularly devastating, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. We have built a full atomic model of the influenza envelope, comprised of 210 million atoms. In order to gain unprecedented insights into the mechanisms of influenza virulence that will accelerate anti-viral therapeutics development, we are running molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of this system on the Stampede Xeon Phi co-processors. To read further, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/-/real-science-using-stampede-s-xeon-phi.
Computational Linguistics Reveals How Wikipedia Articles Are Biased Against Women
MIT Technology Review
For several years Wikipedia has been criticized for the ways that women involved with it are marginalized or minimized. A new study from researchers at the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, ETH Zurich, and the University of Koblenz-Landau seeks greater insight into the issue by analyzing women's representation in the articles of six different language versions of Wikipedia. The researchers first compared the proportion of articles about men and women to those of other databases of notable people, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Pantheon, and found Wikipedia had slightly more even proportions of articles about men and women compared to the other databases. To read further, please visit http://www.technologyreview.com/view/534616/computational-linguistics-reveals-how-wikipedia-articles-are-biased-against-women/.
UCSD Researchers Are Forecasting the Flu Better
A research team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) says it has refined and improved the predictions of Google Flu Trends (GFT). The researchers report using social network analysis and combining the power of GFT's big data with traditional flu-monitoring data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Our innovation is to construct a network of ties between different U.S. health regions based on information from the CDC," says UCSD doctoral student Michael Davidson. The team considered which places in previous years reported the flu at about the same time. "That told us which regions of the country have the strongest ties, or connections, and gave us the analytic power to improve Google's predictions," Davidson says. To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/forecasting_the_flu_better.
UC San Diego/SDSC Study Advances Brain Cancer Research
Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), Moores Cancer Center, and Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, have shown for the first time a pyramid hierarchical network of “coherent gene modules” that regulate glioblastoma genes, involved in a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. By identifying the most important gene modules responsible for cancer growth and proliferation, the study informs a strategy that could elucidate these modules at the top levels of their network, and in turn be used to identify new drug therapies. The paper appears in the U.K. journal Molecular BioSystems, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. To read further, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR021115_braincancer.html.
Educator News and Opportunities
University of Colorado, Boulder Offers Free Online Course: Water in the Western US
April 1, 2015
Why is there so much conflict over water in the American West? How do major cities and industrial agricultural systems thrive in semi-arid environments and deserts? How will tens of millions of people in the region cope with a warming climate? The course will run 4.5 weeks, accommodates flexible schedules, and requires a total of 20-25 hours to complete. Over a dozen experts in water management, policy, and research are contributing to the course, exploring the scientific, legal, political, and cultural issues impacting water and climate in the Western US. Building on this foundational understanding of climate and water in the West will allow students to examine the Colorado River Basin as a case study, and ultimately conclude the class with a deeper understanding of some controversial water issues faced in the American West. Educators can earn graduate level credit by signing up for a parallel two-credit hour course through The University of Colorado Boulder’s Division of Continuing Education. For more information and to register, please visit https://www.coursera.org/course/waterwestus.
Program Teaches Low-Income Kids to Code
Civil rights activist Van Jones has created Yes We Code, an initiative that aims to teach 100,000 low-income kids programming skills. Yes We Code is helping dozens of organizations around the U.S. that are trying to address high-tech's racial and gender gap, from Black Girls Code to Hack the Hood. It connects those groups with the resources they need, according to Jones. Last year, leading technology companies released data showing African Americans and Hispanics make up just 5 percent of the companies' workforces, compared with 14 percent nationally. Jones says the lack of minority participation means Silicon Valley may be missing out on the next big idea or company because it employs too few women and people of color. He says Yes We Code wants to get communities to redirect young people's talents, and to help the technology industry access that talent from new places, such as community colleges, coding boot camps, tribal colleges, and historically black colleges and universities. "Yes We Code aspires to become the United Negro College Fund equivalent for coding education," Jones says. "Yes We Code exists to find and fund the next Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in communities you would never expect to find them." To read further, please visit http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/19/van-jones-yes-we-code-diversity-technology/21889543/.
The Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institutes
Open sessions (any subject area): June 22-26, July 6-10 or July 27-31, 2015
Science focus: July 20-24, 2015
Civil rights focus: August 3-7, 2015
Application Deadline – March 24, 2015
Immerse yourself in the practice of teaching with primary sources from the unparalleled collections of Library of Congress this summer. Apply to attend a weeklong professional development program for K-12 educators in the nation’s capital. In 2015, the Library will offer five Institute weeks: Each Institute week, Library of Congress education specialists facilitate sessions modeling strategies for using primary sources to engage students, build critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge. Participants reflect on and discuss how the strategies apply to their students, subject areas, and classrooms or school libraries. For complete information, please visit http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/teacherinstitute/.
Reno, Nevada: October 22–24, 2015
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: November 12–14, 2015
Kansas City, Missouri: December 3–5, 2015
Proposals are now being accepted for teacher proposals for the 2016 Nashville national conference. For more details and to submit a proposal, visit Presenting at Conferences. Want to promote your educational product or service? Select Exhibits and Advertising and learn about opportunities at NSTA conferences. NSTA conferences offer the latest in science content, teaching strategy, and research to enhance and expand your professional growth. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to collaborate with science education leaders and your peers. Each year, For complete information, please visit http://www.nsta.org/conferences/.
MOOCs Aim to Strengthen Computer Science and Physics Teaching in Middle and High Schools
Forbes
Many agree that one of the best ways to close the gender and diversity gaps in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is to begin educating students in those fields earlier in their K-12 careers, writes Harvey Mudd College president and former ACM president Maria Klawe. She notes research has shown that early exposure to these subjects increases the likelihood students will go on to pursue them in college. However, many schools, especially those serving underprivileged populations, lack the resources for comprehensive STEM education. Only 10 percent of U.S. K-12 schools offer classes in computer science, for example, and just 5 percent of U.S. high schools are certified to teach Advanced Placement Computer Science. To fill the gap, Harvey Mudd has created three massively open online courses (MOOCs) for middle school and high school teachers. The first course, "Middle Years Computer Science," walks a teacher through the process of developing a computer science curriculum for students with a range of interest and experience in computer science. To read further, please visit http://www.forbes.com/sites/mariaklawe/2015/01/13/moocs-aim-to-strengthen-computer-science-and-physics-teaching-in-middle-and-high-schools/.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
2015 Smithsonian ePals Invent-It Challenge
Submission Deadline – March 27, 2015
If you are 5-21 years old, this challenge is for you. Check out the age groups and categories. categories. You must do four of the Spark Lab Steps of Invention. AS this site is short on text and heavy on graphics and videos, please visit the website to learn more: http://challenges.epals.com/.
Airport Cooperative Research Program -- University Design Competition for Addressing Airport Needs
Submissions Deadline - April 30, 2015
The Airport Cooperative Research Program is accepting applications for its national competition that engages university students in addressing issues relating to airports and the National Airspace System. The competition, managed by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium, challenges individuals and teams of undergraduate and/or graduate students working with faculty advisors at U.S. colleges and universities to consider innovative approaches related to airport issues. The competition focuses on design solutions in the following broad areas: airport operation and maintenance, runway safety/runway incursions/runway excursions, airport environmental interactions, and airport management and planning. Students can win cash prizes for their winning innovative design solutions. First place winners will present their work at a national award ceremony in summer 2015. For more information, including eligibility requirements and application materials, visit http://vsgc.odu.edu/ACRPDesignCompetition/. Please email any questions about this opportunity to ACRP@odu.edu.
UCSD’s Thinkabit Lab Brings World of Creative Engineering to Middle School Students
A group of curious middle-school students at Feaster Middle STEAM Academy in Chula Vista recently was immersed into a world of creative engineering via Thinkabit Lab, an outgrowth of UC San Diego’s K-16 Programs. A hands-on lab, Thinkabit adds an “A” for art to the traditional STEM curriculum of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Taught at Qualcomm's headquarters in Sorrento Valley, the coursework inspires students to be creative while they learn to grasp complex engineering concepts. aura Naderi, a UC San Diego engineering physics graduate who later helped launch MyLab at Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute, instructs the sessions, motivating her students to enjoy the process of designing and coding as they build imaginative projects. To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/mobile_thinkabit_lab_brings_world_of_creative_engineering_to_middle_school?utm_campaign=thisweek&utm_medium=email&utm_source=tw-2015-01-22.
2015-16 Virginia Space Grant Consortium STEM Bridge Scholarship
Application Deadline - March 16, 2015.
The Virginia Space Grant Consortium, or VSGC, is offering renewable scholarships to sophomore undergraduate students studying science, technology, engineering or mathematics, or STEM. The STEM Bridge Scholarships are $1,000 and are available to students who are U.S. citizens from any federally recognized minority group enrolled fulltime at one of the five VSGC member universities: The College of William and Mary, Hampton University, Old Dominion University, University of Virginia and Virginia Tech. The STEM Bridge Program bridges students to future opportunities by mentoring and guiding them to future VSGC scholarships and NASA-related paid internships. The program encourages students to explore how their majors can apply to NASA′s Mission. For more information, visit http://vsgc.odu.edu/sf/Bridge/. Please email any questions about this opportunity to rkashiri@odu.edu.
NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowships
Revolving Annual Application Deadline - July 1 and November 1, 2015
The NASA Postdoctoral Program, or NPP, supports NASA's goal to expand scientific understanding of the Earth and the universe in which we live. These opportunities advance NASA's missions in earth science, heliophysics, astrophysics, planetary science, astrobiology, space bioscience, aeronautics and engineering, human exploration and operations, and space technology. Opportunities are available at NASA centers and other NASA-approved sites. U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and foreign nationals eligible for J-1 status as a research scholar may apply. Applicants must have completed a doctorate or equivalent degree before beginning the fellowship, but may apply while completing degree requirements. Applicants who earned the Ph.D. more than five years before the deadline date are categorized as senior fellows; all applicants, no matter their category, must apply and become eligible for an NPP award via the same process. For more information and application procedures, please visit http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/.
Museum Recreates Ancient Roman City Using Lego Blocks
The ancient Roman city of Pompeii was recently recreated at Sydney University’s Nicholson Museum… using 190,000 Lego blocks! It is the largest model of the ancient city ever constructed out of Lego blocks. Within the model’s makeup, There is a mix of ancient and modern elements, displaying Pompeii as it was in 79AD, as it was in the 1700s, and as it is today. The Nicholson Museum, with collections of artifacts from the Mediterranean region, Egypt and the Middle East, is a place where visitors can expect to see Greek vases, Egyptian sculpture and ceramic sherds from Jericho. TO read further, please visit http://baidun.com/blog/2015/01/museum-recreates-ancient-roman-city-using-lego-blocks/.
Faculty Opportunities
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NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's 2015 Faculty Research Program
Application Deadline - April 1, 2015.
Applications are currently accepted for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory 2015 Faculty Research Program. This program provides opportunities for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, faculty to engage in research of mutual interest to the faculty member and a JPL researcher. Non-STEM faculty will be considered based on available opportunities. To be eligible to participate in the program, applicants must hold a full-time appointment at an accredited university or college in the United States. The program awards $15,500 fellowships for 10-week sessions. For more information about this opportunity, visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/intern/apply/jpl-summer-faculty-research-program/.
Inquiries about NASA's JPL Faculty Research Program should be directed to the Petra Kneissl-Milanian at Petra.A.Kneissl-Milanian@jpl.nasa.gov.
Computational Science News of Interest
What Advanced Tech Will Dominate Your Car by 2025? IBM Knows
An IBM study on the future of automotive technologies found self-healing cars featuring social networking communications capabilities and connections to the Internet of Things are the wave of the future. IBM interviewed 175 executives at automotive manufacturers, suppliers, and other businesses in 21 countries about what they expect the cars of 2025 to be able do. "By 2025, the industry will not only recreate our highly personalized and digitized lives inside our cars, but also give consumers a bigger role in defining that experience, whether as a driver or passenger," says IBM's Alexander Scheidt. Some of the study's more interesting findings include the belief of 57 percent of respondents that vehicle "social networks" will be in place by 2025 to enable vehicles to communicate a variety of information with each other that, for example, could help a vehicle diagnose a problem it is having. Nearly 75 percent expect vehicles to be able to learn the behaviors of their driver and occupants to better customize themselves and the information they provide to passengers. To read further, please visit http://www.networkworld.com/article/2870956/security0/what-advanced-tech-will-dominate-your-car-by-2025-ibm-knows.html.
Social Media and HPC
Google Translate App Gets an Upgrade
The New York Times
Google upgraded its Google Translate app this week, adding two new tools that expand the smartphone app's capabilities. The first is a voice tool that provides users with the ability to translate spoken words more seamlessly than before. The tool works best with short, jargon-free sentences with a significant pause between translations, making it ideal for commercial transactions such as ordering at a restaurant. The other tool is a visual translator, which is based on the Word Lens app developed by Quest Visual. Google acquired Quest last May with the goal of incorporating its technology into Google Translate. The new tool enables users to put a piece of text in front of their smartphone's camera and receive an instantaneous translation. To read further, please visit http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/google-translate-app-gets-an-upgrade/?_r=0.
Facebook Offers Artificial Intelligence Tech to Open Source Group
The New York Times
Facebook recently announced plans to donate several powerful computing tools to Torch, an open source software project focused on deep-learning techniques. Among the tools Facebook is donating are neural networking tools the company says are capable of speeding pattern recognition by up to 23.5 times. Facebook also is donating new means for training numerous computer processors at the same time to better catalog words when analyzing language and using speech recognition software. Torch was co-founded by Soumith Chintala, a research engineer studying artificial intelligence at Facebook. Chintala says Torch's assorted tools are useful for a variety of projects ranging from neural networks and artificial intelligence to computer vision and text-recognition systems. To read further, please visit http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/facebook-offers-artificial-intelligence-tech-to-open-source-group/.
