News and Information for the Broad EOT Community
Upcoming Conferences. Workshops and Festivals
GlobusWORLD 2012
April 10-12, 2012 – Chicago, Illinois
The 10th annual GlobusWORLD conference will be held April 10-12, 2012 at Argonne National Laboratory. The leading event for Globus users worldwide, GlobusWORLD offers over two days of presentations, tutorials, and networking opportunities for users, developers and resource owners. The 2012 theme is “Move. Store. Collaborate.” Presentations will focus on how Globus technologies help researchers move their data where they need it, store it for easy access, and collaborate with others via simplified sharing and management. For more information on the conference, including highlights and registration information, please visit http://globusworld.org/.
USA Science and Engineering Festival
April 28-29, 2012 – Washington, DC
Building on the success of the inaugural Science Festival in 2010, the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival will inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers with school programs and nationwide contests throughout the 2011/2012 school year and this event is the finale expo. The Science Festival is the nation’s largest celebration of all things science and engineering and features over 2,000 hands-on activities and over 150 performances. There will be exciting new programs including a Book Fair, Featured Science & Engineering Authors and a Career Pavilion that includes a College Fair, a Job Fair and a Meet the Scientist/Engineer Networking area.. For more information, please visit http://www.usasciencefestival.org/?utm_source=Everyone&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=December+14th+2011+Newsletter.
2012 Broadening Participation in Data Mining Workshop – Call for Participation
April 27-28, 2012 – Anaheim, California
The primary aim of the workshop is to foster mentorship, guidance, and connections of underrepresented groups in Data Mining, while also enriching technical aptitude and exposure. This workshop provides a venue in which to encourage students from such groups to connect with junior and senior research members in industry, academia, and government. The hope is to create and help grow meaningful lasting connections between researchers, thereby strengthening the Data Mining Community. Workshop sponsors include CRA-W, CDC, NSF, and Robert Bosch. For more information and to apply for the workshop, please visit http://dataminingshop.com/application.php.
2012 BioQUEST Workshop: Making a Difference with Data
June 16-22, 2012 - Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland
The learning environments we create must prominently feature data if we wish to provide learners with real opportunities to engage in scientific practices in our curriculum. E-science, open data repositories, and online visualization and analysis tools have lowered the technical barriers to bringing data-rich science into our classrooms. However, we need new curricular and instructional strategies to help us use these resources effectively. Join the workshop for a week of exploring new models and ideas for creating data centric classrooms. Learn from others who are teaching with research data and develop collaborations and materials that will change your courses. Please visit http://bioquest.org/summer2012/ for more information and to submit an application. If you have any questions, please contact Sue Risseeuw at risseeuw@beloit.edu or 608-363-2012.
NSF-Sponsored Interdisciplinary Workshop on Computational Thinking Through Computing an Music
June 21-22, 2012 – Lowell, Massachusetts
The University of Massachusetts, Lowell Departments of Music and Computer Science are pleased to offer our first NSF-sponsored interdisciplinary Performamatics workshop on Computational Thinking through Computing and Music. The purpose of this workshop is to share our techniques and materials and to provide an environment in which other pairs of professors can work together to develop interdisciplinary relationships and materials of their own to use in courses at their home institutions. Workshop participants are required to attend in interdisciplinary pairs, preferably from the same institution. This will ensure that the workshop itself models interdisciplinary collaboration and produces outcomes that connect directly to participants' own situations. Professors and instructors from 2- and 4-year colleges are encouraged to attend. For more information and to apply, please visit http://teaching.cs.uml.edu/~heines/TUES/ProjectHome.jsp.
International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers (ROSS 2012)
June 25-29, 2012 – Vienna, Italy
The complexity of node architectures in supercomputers increases as we cross petaflop milestones on the way towards Exascale. Increasing levels of parallelism in multi- and many-core chips and emerging heterogeneity of computational resources coupled with energy and memory constraints force a reevaluation of our approaches towards operating systems and runtime environments. The International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers provides a forum for researchers to exchange ideas and discuss research questions that are relevant to upcoming supercomputers. For more information, please visit http://www.mcs.anl.gov/events/workshops/ross/2012/.
7th Annual Computer Science for High School Teachers Summer Workshop
August 1-3, 2012 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is running their 7th annual CS4HS summer workshop. The workshop includes activities that help high school teachers understand the breadth of computer science beyond Java programming. We provide hands-on activities that teachers can use in their classrooms to show their students how to use computational thinking principles to solve problems, explore the use of robots and other software to solve real-world problems, and learn more about the various fields of study within computer science including machine learning and human computer interaction. Teachers will visit the local Google office in Pittsburgh to speak with Google engineers about how to help prepare their students for jobs in the computing industry, and there will be an open forum to discuss ways to improve the perception and relevance of computing in K-12. For more information and to register, please visithttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/cs4hs/summer12
BMEI'12-CISP'12
October 16-18, 2012 - Chongqing, China
BMEI'12-CISP'12 is a premier international forum for scientists and researchers to present the state of the art of multimedia, signal processing, biomedical engineering and informatics. To promote international participation of researchers from outside the country/region where the conference is held (i.e., China’s mainland), researchers outside of China’s mainland are encouraged to propose invited sessions. The first author of each paper in an invited session must not be affiliated with an organization in China’s mainland. All papers in the invited sessions can be marked as "Invited Paper". The organizer(s) for each invited session with at least 6 registered papers will (jointly) enjoy an honorarium of US*D 400. Invited session organizers will solicit submissions, conduct reviews and recommend accept/reject decisions on the submitted papers. Invited session organizers will be able to set their own submission and review schedules, as long as a list of recommended papers is determined by 10 August 2012. Each invited session proposal should include: (1) the name, bio, and contact information of each organizer of the invited session; (2) the title and a short synopsis of the invited session. Please send your proposal to cisp-bmei@cqupt.edu.cn. For more information, please visit http://cisp-bmei.cqupt.edu.cn/.
SC12: Call for Technical Papers
November 10-16, 2012 – Salt Lake City, Utah
Abstracts due April 20. 2012
Full Papers due April 27, 2012
The SC Technical Papers program is the premier forum for submissions of excellent scientific merit that introduce new ideas to the field and stimulate future trends in high performance computing, networking, and storage. New features in 2012 include: eight topical areas for presenting the highest-quality, original research: Algorithms; Applications; Architectures and Networks; Clouds and Grids; Performance, Energy, and Dependability; Programming Systems; Storage, Visualization, and Analytics; System Software and "State of the Practice" integrated into technical papers as the ninth topical area for presenting contributions that can advance the practice of high performance computing, including facilities, services and systems. For more information, please visit http://sc12.supercomputing.org/content/overview-0
XSEDE Happenings
Third EU-U.S. Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences on June 24-28, 2012 - Dublin, Ireland
Applications Being Accepted
The U.S. National Science Foundation’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) project and the European Union Seventh Framework Program’s Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) are pleased to announce the third International Summer School on High Performance Computing (HPC) Challenges in Computational Sciences. The summer school is designed to foster international and multidisciplinary research collaborations with U.S. and European graduate and postdoctoral scholars. Leading American and European computational scientists and HPC technologists will present a variety of topics, including:
• An overview of EU and U.S. cyberinfrastructure
• HPC challenges by discipline (e.g., bioinformatics, computer science, chemistry, and physics)
• HPC Programming Proficiencies
• Performance Analysis & Profiling
• Algorithmic Approaches & Numerical Libraries
• Data Intensive Computing
• Scientific Visualization
The expense-paid program will benefit advanced scholars from European and U.S. institutions who currently use HPC to conduct research. Further information and application: https://www.xsede.org/web/summerschool12..
New Details About XSEDE12 Conference
A new conference from XSEDE is coming! This conference will support and enhance the world of advanced digital resources and services. Scientists, engineers, social scientists, and humanities experts at colleges, universities, and research centers around the world use those resources and services to make us all healthier, safer and better informed. XSEDE, the eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, is the largest collection of distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research in the United States. As the inaugural conference of XSEDE, XSEDE12 is a forum for the presentation of high-quality technical papers, posters, panels, and Birds of a Feather sessions that will facilitate communication among scientists and students who use XSEDE and other cyberinfrastructure resources. For more information, key dates and submission deadlines, please visit https://www.xsede.org/xsede12-call-for-participation
Call for Presentations - Extreme Scaling Workshop from Blue Waters and XSEDE
July 15-16, 2012 - Chicago, Illinois
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications' Blue Waters and eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) projects are hosting the sixth in a series of Extreme Scaling workshops. The workshop will address algorithmic and applications challenges and solutions in large-scale computing systems with limited memory and I/O bandwith. The presentations and discussion are intended to assist the computational science and engineering community in making effective use of petascale through extreme-scale systems across the spectrum from local campus-scale to national systems. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xscale.
XSEDE Student Engagement Program Seeks Undergraduate Students for Summer Internship Opportunities
The XSEDE Student Engagement Program is seeking undergraduate and graduate students for a 10-week project experience for this summer. Working with XSEDE researchers and staff, students will make meaningful contributions to research, development and systems projects that benefit the national scientific and computational community. In exchange, students will be provided with travel support for project orientation and to attend the XSEDE’12 conference in Chicago, IL in July, and a small stipend. Available projects are listed at https://www.xsede.org/student-engagement-projects. To apply, complete the form online at https://www.xsede.org/student-intern-form and email your current resume and current academic transcripts to outreach-stueng@xsede.org. Your application will not be considered until all material has been received. Questions can be sent to outreach-stueng@xsede.org.
Campus Champions
Campus Champions Grow to 150
The Campus Champions program has grown to 150 partner sites. Following is a list of XSEDE Campus Champions sorted by institution. Each listing also indicates whether the Campus Champion site is an Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) state or a minority-serving institution (MSI). To view the complete listing, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/guest/current-champions.
XSEDE Training Classes for April 2012
April 9, 2012, 9:00am- 4:00pm EDT
Introduction to Scientific Visualization @ CAU
Accelerating Applications with OpenACC
April 18-19, 2012 – Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Registration Deadline - April 13, 2012
PSC, together with NVIDIA and PGI, will hold a hands-on workshop on GPGPU programming using OpenACC, an open standard for compiler directives to make accelerators easier to program. Using OpenACC directives in standard C and Fortran, programmers insert compiler hints into their code to automatically execute compute-intensive regions of code on accelerators, simplifying code development and improving performance portability. While GPGPU programming experience is not required for participation in the workshop, a working knowledge of C or Fortran is required. There will be ample time for hands-on experience, so participants are encouraged to bring their own codes. After two days, codes may experience significant acceleration with OpenACC. For more information and to register, please visit http://www.psc.edu/training/OpenACC/.
April 19, 2012, 2:00pm- 4:00pm CDT
XSEDE New User Training
April 23, 2012, 9:00am- 4:00pm CDT
XSEDE Training: HPC Python Tutorial
To register, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar.
XSEDE Releases New Online Tutorial on Using the Lustre File System
The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) project has released a new online tutorial titled "Using the Lustre File System" in CI-Tutor. This tutorial provides users of high-performance computing applications with a basic understanding of the Lustre file system and how to use it to achieve optimal I/O performance. Lustre, a blend of the words Linux and cluster, is open-source storage architecture for cluster computing environments. It is an object-based, parallel-distributed file system that enables scaling to tens of thousands of nodes, petabytes (PB) of storage, and high aggregate throughput up to hundreds of gigabytes per second. These features make Lustre advantageous for many scientific computing applications across a broad range of domains. Lustre file systems are used in computer clusters ranging from small workgroup clusters to large-scale, multi-site clusters. A number of the top supercomputers in the world use it, such as the Kraken XT5 at the National Institute for Computational Sciences/University of Tennessee. Information on XSEDE resources using Lustre can be found on the XSEDE Storage web page. To read further, please visit https://www.xsede.org/new-online-lustre-file-system-tutorial.
Research News and Announcements
PSC’s Newest Supercomputer, Blacklight, is Helping to Break Open a Potential Bottleneck in Processing and Analysis of DNA
It didn’t take long for Blacklight to show its mettle as a tool for genome sequencing. PSC’s newest supercomputer, a resource of XSEDE, came online as a production system in October 2010, and due to its availability, two projects involving genomics — a science that has in the last few years shifted into data-intensive overdrive — made remarkable progress. New sequencing instruments, hardware technologies that “read” sequences of DNA and decipher the order of nucleotide bases — A, G, C and T (adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine) — have begun to produce data at unprecedented speed. “Within the last three to five years,” says Cecilia Lo, chair of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Department of Developmental Biology, “new sequencers have come on line, carrying out sequencing that is referred to as ‘next-generation sequencing.’ What used to take years with capillary sequencing can now be accomplished in a matter of one or two weeks.” To read further, please visit http://psc.edu/science/2011/sequencing/.
Purdue University Researcher Says Free Apps Eat Up Your Phone Battery Just Sending Ads
Free versions of Android apps use up to 75 percent of their energy serving up ads or tracking and uploading user data, says Purdue University's Abhinav Pathak. Moreover, the free apps can drain a smartphone's battery in approximately 90 minutes, Pathak and colleagues say. The Purdue researchers developed software to analyze the energy usage of apps. The software found that popular apps such as Angry Birds, Free Chess, and NYTimes spend only 10 percent to 30 percent of their energy powering their core function. For example, Angry Birds uses only 20 percent of its energy displaying and running the game, but 45 percent on finding and uploading the user's location with global positioning systems, then downloading location-appropriate ads over a 3G connection. To read further, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328566.400-free-apps-eat-up-your-phone-battery-just-sending-ads.html.
A Tree of Life Grows in Texas
You may think the Tree of Life was settled a long time ago (or maybe you don't believe in it at all), but scientists continue to refine, and sometimes radically alter, our understanding of how species are related to each other. Whereas once, evolutionary history was based on the relationships of bones, skeletons and other morphological clues, today, DNA is the main informer in the story of how the Earth became such a diverse place. Phylogenetics is the branch of life science that studies the evolutionary relationships among organisms based on genetic evidence. By aligning the molecular sequences of different species (from genes, but also from transcriptomes and proteins), it is possible to see how organisms differ at the genetic level. One can then determine where species diverged and create branching trees of relationships based on the alignments. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/feature-stories/2012/tree-of-life.
NCSA’s iForge: A Supercomputer for Industry
Merle Giles, Evan Burness and Seid Koric from NCSA's Private Sector Program explain how the center's industry partners benefit from iForge, a supercomputer specifically designed for their needs. To watch the video discussion, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/News/Video/2012/psp_iforge.html.
Educator Programs and Curriculum
SCRATCH@MIT CONFERENCE
June 25-28, 2012 – Cambridge, Massachusetts
Early Registration – April 1, 2012
Join educators and researchers from around the world to share experiences and imagine the possibilities of Scratch! With Scratch, everyone can program their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations -- and share their creations with one another online. More than 2 million projects have been shared on the Scratch website (http://scratch.mit.edu), with thousands of new projects every day. The conference will feature workshops, panels, presentations, demos, and posters on a wide variety of Scratch-related topics, from technologies to pedagogies, from applications to implications. For more information, please visit http://events.scratch.mit.edu/conference/
NASA Seeks High School Pilot Teachers
Are you interested in an opportunity for your class to be on the cutting edge of NASA space science? How about participating in a Dawn pilot study? Dawn Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) has developed a module of activities unpacking the concepts as to how Dawn's instruments gather and analyze data: Interactions of Energy and Matter: Dawn Instrumentation. Ideal for high school physics, chemistry and integrated science classes, we are piloting the materials during the spring and fall of 2012. For questions, please contact Sharon Unkart at sunkart@mcrel.org.
Community Colleges Should Urge Women to Pursue Science and Math Careers, Report Says
Excerpt from the Chronicle of Higher Education
Not enough women at community colleges are studying for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), which are among the U.S.'s fastest growing fields, according to a recent Institute for Women's Policy Research report. The report calls on community colleges to encourage female students to pursue careers in STEM fields, particularly low-income students and those with children. The report suggests actively recruiting women into STEM programs by emphasizing the economic value of occupations in those fields. Although women make up nearly half of the labor force, only 25 percent of STEM jobs are held by women, according to the report. Employment in STEM-related fields is projected to increase by 10 percent between 2008 and 2018, and, in some subspecialties, that growth is projected to be up to 30 percent, the report notes. Community colleges could be key to boosting the number of women in STEM fields because they enroll a disproportionate number of low-income women, many of whom also are parents, according to the report, which also notes that those students tend to pursue lower-paying careers. Tao read further, please visit http://chronicle.com/article/Community-Colleges-Should-Urge/131258/.
What’s New at Shodor!
Shodor has had one of the largest enrollments for our Saturday explorations program, while additionally starting a new group of students in the Shodor Apprenticeship Program (you can see this year's class at http://www.shodor.org/about/apprentices). This year, they are also expanding our summer explorations to encompass new topics in science and parallel computing. With all of this, Shodor staff is working across the triangle and across the state to expand opportunities for students in other communities to experience a Shodor-like workshop or class in modeling and computing skills. Our international program also sponsored its first trip- a workshop at Dublin City University in Ireland- for teachers in the Noyce Scholarship program. While expanding outside of the Durham area, Shodor is looking to expand our after-school offerings as well, so that students near our new center can more easily participate in activities at Shodor. Patricia Jacobs and others have been working on this, making contacts with the East Durham Children's Initiative and Eastway Elementary. For more news and information, please visit http://www.shodor.org.
Faculty Opportunities
Early Career Faculty NASA Space Tech Research Opportunities
Submission Deadline – May 3, 2012
NASA is seeking proposals from accredited U.S. universities on behalf of outstanding early career faculty beginning their independent careers. This inaugural Space Technology Research Opportunities for Early Career Faculty solicitation seeks to sponsor research in specific, high priority technology areas of interest to NASA. Specific topic areas were selected because they can best benefit from early stage innovative approaches provided by U.S. academic institutions. The research will investigate unique, disruptive or transformational space technologies or concepts. For information on the solicitation, including specific technology areas of interest and how to submit notices of intent and proposals, please visit http://go.usa.gov/P31. For more information about the Space Technology Program and the crosscutting space technology areas of interest to NASA, please visit http://www.nasa.gov/oct.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
SDSC and UCSD Offer Summer Career Experiences for High School Students (CEHS) to Strengthen 21st Century Workforce
The CEHS program aims to engage diverse, talented high school students from around San Diego County to participate in career training and exploration through internships provided by UCSD departments. It is designed to encourage students from diverse backgrounds and interests to become the next generation of the highly trained 21st century workforce. Giving students internship experience prior to pursuing post secondary education will broaden their horizons beyond Internet research alone. Students will be able to explore the field of linguistics or landscape architecture or machine fabrication or hospitality services, while gaining valuable and perhaps life-changing experience. This program goes beyond standard research opportunities in that it reaches students who do not plan to pursue the sciences as a career path. UCSD has such a breadth of career options for students as a course of study and showcasing these opportunities is a benefit to both the campus and the community. The program will integrate students into existing multidimensional campus work environments and thereby into a rewarding career exploration, while still in high school. For more information and to view a list of opportunities, please visit http://blink.ucsd.edu/HR/services/associations/SA/CEHS.html#What-is-the-Career-Experiences-.
News at 11 – XSEDE Partners in the Spotlight
Focus on Genomics Medicine is Growing, says SDSC’s Mike Norman
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has in the last three years undergone a major reboot, remaking itself into a center of expertise on all aspects of “big data” research including genomics, one of the fastest growing areas of scientific study. “We have in recent years become a lot more than a supercomputer center,” SDSC Director Michael Norman told attendees earlier this month at the third annual X-Gen Congress & Expo, a four-day event focused on exploring the potential of established and emerging genomic technologies. “Our real expertise is now in all aspects of ‘big data’, which includes data integration, performance modeling, data mining, software development, workflow automation, and more. We believe that data-enabled science is the beginning of a new scientific era.” To read further, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR032012_xgen.html.
TACC at SXSW Interactive 2012
The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals combines the best of music, film, and emerging technologies. While the conference was originally known for its musical showcases, the interactive portion now draws more attendees than film and music combined. involved as the interactive conference grows. At the 2012 Conference (March 9-13), TACC staff members gave official presentations, demonstrated new technologies, and attended panels and sessions relating to their respective fields of expertise. To view the slideshow that highlights some of these presentations and experiences, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/feature-stories/2012/sxswi.
Who, What, Where - XSEDE Across the Country
Make your plans for XSEDE12
July 16-20, Chicago – Chicago, Illinois
Bridging from the eXtreme to the campus and beyond
Begin making your plans for the annual conference of XSEDE, which is scheduled for July 16-20, 2012, XSEDE12 promises to bring together staff and users for an engaging, productive five days at the Intercontinental hotel on Michigan Avenue, in the heart of the city's downtown and its prime shopping area, the Magnificent Mile. Please bookmark the following link and check back for updates, which will be posted as they become available: https://www.xsede.org//xsede12
Last But Not Least - Odds and Ends of Interest
Computer Science at the World Economic Forum
Several academic computer scientists were invited to participate the recent World Economic Forum sessions known as Idea Labs, which were organized around a single theme and institution. Tomaso Poggio and Alex Pentland participated in a session titled Worms, Machines and Brains With MIT, while Justine Cassell, Pradeep Khosla, Tom Mitchell, and Manuela Veloso participated in the Leveraging Human-Machine Collaboration With Carnegie Mellon University session. Stephanie Forrest spoke in the session titled Managing Complexity With the Santa Fe Institute. The event also gave scientists the opportunity to speak in specialized sessions and panels on related topics. For example, Poggio was one of two speakers in The Mind and the Machine session, and Forrest was a panelist in the Risks in a Hyperconnected World session. Forrest's remarks on biological models for software security drew questions from an immunologist, the chief of Europol, a vice president of the European Commission, and the CEO of a large multinational corporation. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2012/03/18/computer-science-at-the-world-economic-forum/.
In Crosswords, It's Man Over Machine, for Now
Excerpt from the New York Times
A crossword-solving computer program named Dr. Fill recently competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament against 600 of the U.S.'s best human players. Although the Dr. Fill program finished 141st in the tournament, Matthew Ginsberg, who created the software, was pleased with the result and intends to have Dr. Fill compete again next year. He says the program is literal-minded, and struggles on puzzles with humor or those with unusual themes or letter arrangements. One of the puzzles included several words that had to be spelled backward, and another puzzle had words arrayed diagonally. However, in simulations of 15 past tournaments, Ginsberg says Dr. Fill finished in first place three times. Despite speculation that the puzzles were made especially difficult to stump Dr. Fill, tournament director Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times, says he did not choose the puzzles with the computer program in mind. To read further, please visit http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/in-crosswords-man-over-machine-for-now/.
Mario Is Hard, and That's Mathematically Official
Excerpt from New Scientist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers recently analyzed the computational complexity of video games and found that many of them belong to a class of mathematical problems called NP-hard. The implication is that for a given game level, it can be very tough to determine whether it is possible for a player to reach the end. The results suggest that some hard problems could be solved by playing a game. The researchers, led by MIT's Erik Demaine, converted each game into a Boolean satisfiability problem, which asks whether the variables in a collection of logical statements can be chosen to make all the statements true, or whether the statements inevitably contradict each other. For each game, the team built sections of a level that force players to choose one of two paths, which are equal to assigning variables in the Boolean satisfiability problem. If they permit the completion of a level, that is equivalent to all of the statements in the Boolean problem being true. However, if they make completion impossible, it is equal to a contradiction. Many of the games proved to be NP-hard, which means that deciding whether a player can complete them is at least as difficult as the hardest problems in NP. To read further, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328565.100-mario-is-hard-and-thats-mathematically-official.html.
Contribute to the XSEDE Education Blog Spot
XSEDE News and Information is updated continually. To submit information for inclusion, please send email to amason@ucsd.edu.
