U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) programs that assist specific racial and ethnic groups would be consolidated under a new proposal from the agency. According to the Obama administration’s budget recommendations for the 2011 fiscal year, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, and the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program would be replaced by the $103 million Comprehensive Broadening Participation of Undergraduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program, which would be allotted 14 percent more in funding than the three programs currently receive. NSF director Arden L. Bement Jr. says the number of minority students majoring in the sciences was not increasing fast enough under the old approach. “Linear growth is no longer acceptable, so we have to go into geometric growth,” Bement says.
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Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications researchers have experimented with using visible light from commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data wirelessly at speeds of up to 230 Mbit per sec. One advantage to using light to carry data over Wi-Fi or another system is that the lights are already in the room, says Fraunhofer researcher Jelena Vucic. A signal from a LED is generated by slightly flickering all the lights in unison at a rate millions of times faster than the human eye can detect. Although the bandwidth for commercial LEDs is limited to a few megahertz, Vucic’s team increased the amount tenfold by filtering out all the light except for the blue part of the spectrum. The researchers say the data rate could be doubled with some modulation adjustments.
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Indiana University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a method for finding where malicious systems originate. The researchers performed a statistical analysis of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from blacklists to identify Internet service providers, hosting services, or other autonomous systems with high levels of blacklisted IP addresses. “We wanted to be able to say if a particular network is doing a good job of cleaning up its machines,” says Oak Ridge researcher Craig Shue. The researchers found that some autonomous systems have more than 80 percent of their IP addresses blacklisted. Three U.S.-based hosting providers accounted for more than six percent of one of the blacklists, a disproportionately large percentage for the size of the systems. “This indicates that some [autonomous systems] have either too lax a security policy or may be intentionally harboring cybercrime,” the researchers say. The next step is to evaluate the quality of the blacklist data.
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Advanced computer modeling has enabled British Petroleum (BP) to determine the best design and operating conditions for its oil refinery in Kwinana. BP teamed up with the Curtin University of Technology and the University of Newcastle to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for the refinery’s catalyst strippers, which use steam to separate hydrocarbons from the process that breaks up heavy crude oil into smaller molecular parts. A team led by Curtin’s Center of Process Systems Computations (CPSC) used the CFD model to evaluate the internal structure that impacts the interactions between gases and solids, and to determine the optimal mix of steam, catalyst, and hydrocarbons inside the stripper. CPSC director Vishnu Pareek says simulating a few seconds of real-time interaction in the catalyst stripper used to take weeks. “This project used innovative techniques to achieve realistic flow predictions with the least amount of computational effort required,” he says. BP says the CFD model will help save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on steam usage.
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University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA) computer scientists have developed a computer-based, emotionally perceptive math tutoring program aimed at girls. “According to our studies, the extra support they need compared to boys is more about emotion than information,” says UMA professor Beverly Woolf. Studies have shown that girls in fifth grade thrive on extra attention and respond to supportive characters and positive feedback. The software’s computer-based lessons use these techniques as well as sensors and cameras that can recognize when students are happy, stressed, or feeling confident. During testing, girls preferred receiving emotional support that matches their mood, but it seemed less important to boys. Currently, the software can correctly identify the mood of the user about 70 to 80 percent of the time. Other groups, such as low achievement and special needs students, also have shown improvement after using the software.
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