University of Southampton (ECS) (02/25/09) Lewis, Joyce 

The University of Southampton’s LexDis project aims to make a wider variety of assistive technologies recognizable as useful tools to all learners. The project, led by Mike Wald and E.A. Draffan from the School of Electronics and Computer Science’s Learning Societies Lab and the School of Education’s Jane Seale, is assessing the difficulties disabled learners experience in e-learning programs. The researchers are exploring the problems students encounter when working online, including the use of Web 2.0 services and applications. Some of the major recommendations of the project include making more online materials available, which is critical for users who cannot handle paper-based materials easily, and increasing the level of awareness for the use of alternative formats. The project also recommends designing and developing learning opportunities and support systems that recognize the factors that influence disabled students’ use of technology, particularly time. “Time is not on the disabled student’s side and indeed time is a real issue for every student, so there is a genuine need to keep technologies as simple as possible,” Draffan says. “We found it really useful that the students who took part in the LexDis project came up with new ideas for working with inaccessible resources and were often very innovative in the way they carried out research.”

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IDG News Service (02/26/09) Shah, Agam

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has requested a $7 billion budget for fiscal year 2010 to fund science and technology research at U.S. universities, which would be a 16 percent increase from NSF’s 2009 budget. In addition to the proposed budget, the NSF will receive $3 billion from the recently passed economic stimulus package. Although NSF has not submitted a proposal on how it plans to spend that money, part of the stimulus funds would go to buying devices such as electron microscopes and robotic equipment for universities, says NSF’s Dana Cruikshank. Another portion would be used in science and technology education programs. NSF has largely been focusing its recent research funding on nanotechnology, cloud computing, and supercomputing. It also launched the Science and Engineering Beyond Moore’s Law program, which supports groups exploring material beyond silicon that could enhance computing. NSF also is interested in developing hardware that enables petaflop and exaflop computing, and using that power to make massive data sets relevant. The Expedition in Computing program aims to use massive computational tools and data sets to support environmental sustainability, including a better understanding of weather patterns and using water resources more efficiently.

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